the artist's young spouse, wore a great billowing pastel housedress and flattened espadrilles and was, for better or worse, the sexiest morbidly obese woman Atwater had ever seen. -- David Foster Wallace, "The Suffering Channel", loc. 3973
Everyone remembers Pruitt Vince. The involuntary eye movement, his weight, pasty face. The unique signature of his character makes him easy to recall. The obscenely heavy foil in House, the one submissive john in Monster spared by Aileen Wuornous. Pruitt's part was small but crucial because the tables had turned. The trick was vulnerable and the hard luck bitch minimized herself for the few moments it took to bring on ejaculation. Harsh scene. With the right casting director Pruitt does the good guy, the bad guy, and the acerbic Manichean in the middle. In Identity Mangold makes an interesting choice to pit Molina against Vince, suggesting over-classification of mental defect and the loss of our own agency to it are two sides of the same coin. Molina's countenance also leaves viewers uneasy-- not quite one type or another, almost Byzantine. The ying and the yang meta-fictional reality book end the formulaic red shirt elimination plot so popularized by Agatha Christie. Cleverly done, where even the sanest parts of Malcolm Rivers are corrupted.
Dissociative identity disorder, however, may not be a real mental illness, and it is not so sweet or succinct as famously brought on by the author of Sybil. This has not prevented the industry from mythologizing it, conflating it as a fascinating morality play, and it will no doubt stay that way until a pupil of Aaron Eckhart deconstructs it just as Eckhart deconstructs the dark side of secular liberalism with ruthless, painfully funny, veracity. Pruitt Vince will always have work due to his mild yet egregious condition. Would there ever be a day where he'd get lead billing?
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