Pruitt Taylor Vince's role in the film "Heavy" offers a poignant lens through which to examine societal attitudes toward obesity and the personal struggles of those who are overweight. While the film doesn't explicitly offer weight loss tips, it subtly touches upon the emotional and social challenges associated with being overweight, which can inform a more compassionate and understanding approach to weight management.
"Heavy": A Character Study
"Heavy" is a film about sad and desperate people, all of whom seem to have nothing to look forward to. The movie captures a period of time where our big hero, Victor, is experiencing a number of life-altering changes. The film could be described as restrained; like its protagonist, Vincent (Pruitt Taylor Vince), it’s very sparse and selective in what it has to say, focusing on a brief point in Vincent’s life where a beautiful young woman, Callie (Liv Tyler) takes a waitressing job at the restaurant he owns with his mother, Dolly (Shelly Winters). Vincent is a middle-aged, single (presumably never-married) man living and sharing a family business with his mother that she had owned with his now-deceased father. At the center of the film is Victor, played magnificently by Pruitt Taylor Vince. He's the cook at his mother's restaurant. Victor goes about his job and life almost mechanically, he rarely say a word and his movement is limited.
Our first introduction to Vincent plays upon our own bigoted perceptions of big guys: that they're all perverts. But through the film, we get to know Vince, and find that he is motivated, or rather paralyzed, by a fear of change and a painful shyness. His also a highly moral person. Not in the Christian sense, which would tend to make him seem truly perverse, but in the Human sense. He believes in Dignity and, despite the seemingly futility of it, Hope. These are hard things to find in the small town in which he resides; especially considering he works in the family pub.
When a new waitress, Callie (Liv Tyler), starts work at the bar, Victor's daily life is suddenly altered from a spark of curiosity. He's not a perverted horndog, but he is fascinated by this girl's kindness and beauty, watching her from afar and having visions of her as the drama grows. It's the quiet internal struggle Victor faces that really heightens the intensity of the movie. Those nervous eyes, the quiet voice, the big guy who won't fight back… he is a man trying to become a man. By the end of the film, we are at least given the hope that he is now on the right track.
The Social Stigma of Obesity
Vincent’s size is a source of insecurity which she glosses over. Not uncommon to fat protagonists, Vincent’s size has to Mean Something, and we discover that his fatness is symptomatic of his arrested development. The film "Heavy" touches on these notions through the personal struggles of protagonist Victor (Vince). Well before obesity and fatphobia became hot-button topics. In Heavy, Vincent is held back over and over again by language based on his weight.
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Status as a social outsider is common to the other fat male love interests. All four of the school-age protagonists I’ve covered (in Superbad, the Motel, Angus, and Terri) are bullied. The male love interests in Hitch, Knocked Up, Enough Said, and I Want Someone… are all coded as unattractive, at least in part due to their size.
Portrayals of Fatness in Film
[Amy Schumer’s] films feel representational of a troubling phenomenon in the rapid gentrification of the fat movement: the ability for smaller bodied fat people to rise in visibility while larger fat people - and the human rights of all fat people - get increasingly sidelined.
Living with (and caring for) family suggests a body equipped for domesticity and comfort, the attributes that would be preferable for a long-haul relationship. Living with similarly slackerish friends suggests an adolescent indolence that requires fixing through maturity (ie. in the direction of a productive job and nuclear family). This domesticity and/or arrested development also usually comes with another layer of outsiderness or contempt, often based on the character’s fatness.
The "Fat Suit" Trope
When a major actor receives a role that requires obesity, there are two options: go on a high-calorie diet as Robert De Niro did for Raging Bull and The Untouchables (1987) or Vincent D'Onofrio did for Full Metal Jacket, and go through the effort of losing that weight afterward - or just wear a Fat Suit.
Fat Suits are sophisticated three-dimensional prosthetic makeup that go far beyond just putting a pillow under one's shirt.
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Weight Loss as a Means of Self-Improvement
His desire to free himself from stagnancy also comes in the form of trying to lose weight, a goal he starts pursuing when he sees Callie making out with Jeff. Vincent’s weight-loss subplot in Heavy is an example of a pattern I’ve noticed across most of the films in the trope deep dive series: a fat man improving himself to become worthy of a thin woman’s love. Heavy is similar to Superbad and Hitch, where a fat character changes himself and goes outside his comfort level to attract the attention of a thin love interest.
The journey of self-improvement, even if it doesn’t include weight loss, implies that he has to prove his worthiness. It functions as a compensation, gives her a reason to fall in love with him.
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