Just finished watching Primal Fear. Pretty excellent movie, and that is an awesome "twist" at the end. I did a quick read up of what other people thought about it online. And it seems most people (and Wikipedia) are taking the end scene at face value - that Aaron was just faking having a personality disorder the entire time, and that Aaron and Roy are one and the same, and always have been.
I didn't read it this way. For me it's a lot more ambiguous. I interpreted this scene to be... that Aaron actually did have a split personality. Aaron's second identity - Roy, is a complete manipulator. And that after his attack on Venable in the courthouse, he was still in the Roy personality when conversing with Vail in his cell, and merely pretended to be Aaron temporarily. Maybe he did this because he wants to fuck with Gere's character, or maybe he wants to be seen as the smart one, or the alpha personality.
So, the reasons why I think he really does have a split personality disorder are:
1. In the scene where Aaron is running from the cops, he looks genuinely terrified, the character of "Roy" would not look so scared in my opinion. He was hiding in the bushes directly after the murder, not very Roy. This was Aaron - the good side of the personality.
2. He sang on the church choir, again I can't see Roy doing this, even for show. He's bad through and through.
3. There is no way the archbishop would have brought "Roy" to stay with him in the first place - since the archbishop was a peadophile (or at least a pervert, can't remember if they specified), he would have targeted someone who was weak-willed and easily manipulated. The character of "Roy" certainly was none of these things, Aaron certainly was though.
4. He was diagnosed as having a split personality by a neurological expert. Aaron/Roy would not have been educated enough to so successfully fake the symptoms and fool an expert like this.
5. We see Aarons face multiple times, where he knows he is unobserved by the other characters, and retains the clueless expression and harmless demeanour of Aaron.
6. In the scene where we first see a glimpse of Roy, it is in the scene with the neurologist. He only becomes Roy when the battery on the camera dies, this fact later hurts his case in court, as there is no video evidence to back up this claim he has a split personality.
7. In the scene where Roy reveals himself to Vail for the first time, he impersonates Aaron by doing a stutter in his speech. So Roy has a history of imitating Aaron, but pushes this further in the final cell scene with Vail.
Whether he has a split personality or not, it's awesome that the movie messes with your head so much and makes you doubt and second-guess yourself. What do people think? Am I onto something, or am I reading too much into it. Anyone else see any proof to prove either way?
Submitted June 22, 2019 at 04:54AM by reelablemedal http://bit.ly/2XmYsWH