Summary

               This review will center around the movie “Heavy”, staring Pruitt Taylor Vince as the main character, Victor Modino and Liv Tyler playing Callie as the deuteragonist. Some of the other notable characters are Shelley winters as Dolly Modino or Victors mom, Deborah Harry as Delores, a waitress that works for the Modinos’, and Joe Grifasi as Leo or a bar regular at the Modinos’ family restaurant. This film takes place in a small town in upstate New York that went unnamed for the length of the film, but the whole story is based around Victor and his crippling shyness going through his mundane life until and a series of minor and major changes cause him to skew from his comfortable lifestyle. One of the first of many rapid changes his life goes through is when Dolly hires a new and beautiful waitress named Callie. Victor falls for her instantly and he is forced to deal with his shyness at work every day now since he is also the only cook at this restaurant. Every time these two characters interact it is always one sided with Callie always carrying the conversation. The second and biggest shift in Victor’s life happens one morning after he comes back home from the grocery store. After he arrives back from the store, he finds his mother passed out on the floor and is unresponsive assumedly from a heart attack or a stroke. She ended up being hospitalized for a little while until she eventually passes away while Victor is getting lunch in the cafeteria. This has a major impact on Victor since his mother was the only family he had left. This event weighed heavy on Victor throughout the rest of the movie because he refused to tell anyone about it for two weeks. This becomes apparent when Victor takes Callie to see Dolly’s grave. Callie was reasonably upset with Victor for hiding this from everyone and she stormed off after yelling at him. After she turned and walked away Victor was able to painfully get out the words “I didn’t want anything to change”. After this one-sided fight Callie does not show up to work and it is implied that she quit which is yet another big change that finally pushes Victor over the edge and causing him to stray from his gentle and shy nature. Once everyone leaves, he snaps and starts breaking all the glasses and things on top of the bar making him break and sit in silence until late at night when he is visited by Callie and her boyfriend Jeff to collect her last check. Callie and Victor say their final goodbyes, but a big change seemed to happen inside Victor, and he was finally able to talk to Callie and he asked her to visit every once and a while. After this big change inside Victor, the movie ends with him finally being able to gather the courage to speak to a woman that he sees at the convenience store that he normally goes to for groceries

The Role of Food

               In every major event in the movie that is talked about above food is either on screen or is a driving force for what is happening on screen. In every stressful situation that Victor was encountering he had food in-hand or it was an arms-length away. Just in the events I talked about in the summery Victor was eating a large pizza alone when he first saw Callie and fell in love with her. The morning that he went to the store and came back to find his mom unconscious. He made her a massive all-American breakfast while he did not eat a single thing. He was starting to realize that his lifestyle was making himself obese and he even yelled at his mother about it when she tried to argue that he was not. Even when Victor was being told that his mother was going to need to stay in the hospital, he was holding what looked like a vending machine sized bag of Twizzlers. The whole 2 weeks that he was hiding the fact that his mom passed away Victor was shown that he was dealing with it by binge eating sweats and unhealthy foods, making his current feelings towards his own self-image even worse. When he finally shows Callie his mother’s grave and Callie realizes that Victor was lying to everyone for two weeks, she throws the chocolates she was holding on the ground and they went everywhere. I imagine that that was symbolism for Callie and Victors ruined relationship. The final example of Victors relationship with food is when he destroys the bar at his family’s restaurant. This outburst of rage was caused by the whole buildup of frustrating situations and the tipping point was when he saw himself in a mirror scarfing down a whole large pizza alone. He finally had enough of his weight and his situation that all he could thing to do was to destroy something. So, in all Victors whole relationship with food is negative or an unhealthy source of comfort.

Links to Class

               This film has several examples of what we talked about in class. First off, the concept of Food and Identity appears in several scenes throughout the movie. The way the film uses the type of food that the characters eat. Every time Victor Eats in the movie it is to excess or its not considered unhealthy. This is all but stated to be his reason for him being so self-conscious and shy. The only time in the movie that food is looked at in a positive way is when he takes part in the idea of “slow food” and eats with his mother for breakfast. This is the only time any main character in the whole movie sits down to eat as a group. I believe that this is another way the film makers wanted to show how small and pass though-able of a town this is because not even the main characters want to stop and sit. The second theme that pops up in the movie comes from the concept of “taste” but in the lens of skill and social order. This is a running theme throughout the movie. Victor is a great cook and could move on from his family’s small restaurant, but he is surrounded by people that are reluctantly content or unhappy with where there are in life. This combined with his extreme shyness, keeps him from branching out and following any kind of dream that he might have for himself. He seems beaten down or stuck in his day to day life and his fear of change or of making waves makes it all but impossible for him to break the social order, no matter how good at cooking victor is.

My Opinion

          Overall “Heavy” is not that bad of a movie but it is a bit slow for my liking. It’s not like any other movie I would normally watch so I’m thankful for this project because I wouldn’t have watched this otherwise. Another positive of this kind of movie is that its an air tight story and there is no real plot holes. The movies that I normally watch have some kind inconsistency. I can also see myself in Victor because I have struggled with weight and self-image so I find it uplifting that at the end of the movie he’s finally able to overcome his shyness and by extension he has learned to accept himself.

Reference

Miller, R. (Producer), & Mangold, J. (Director). (1995). Heavy [Motion Picture]. United
States: Cinépix Film Properties.