A Different Man
A Different Man takes the old adage about how true beauty lies within and gives it a perverse new twist. Sebastian Stan features as a man named Edward, whose only claim to distinction seems to be a hideously disfigured face. This condition shapes Edward’s personality and the way he interacts with other people, but when he undergoes a miracle procedure and pursues a new life, the outcomes are not at all what might be expected.
This is the third feature by Aaron Schimberg, an emerging American director with a taste for the grotesque. In other hands A Different Man might have been a horror movie, but Schimberg has given us a strange, deadpan comedy of disappointments, reminiscent of a cross between a Woody Allen flick and an arthouse feature such as Teshigahara’s The Face of Another (1966). David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980) is also in the room.
One feels such pity for Edward at the beginning that we surrender our sympathies with the greatest reluctance. We’re on his side, until we can’t be on his side. It’s a strange, unsettling journey into the human psyche.
Edward’s condition is called neurofibromatosis. It causes fleshy tumours to grow all over the sufferer’s face, until it looks as if their features have melted and collapsed in a saggy heap. This illness limits the kind of work Edward can do, but he has bravely tried to turn it to his advantage by taking on acting roles that require disabled or deformed characters.
When an attractive young woman named Ingrid (Renate Reinsve) moves into the apartment next door, she seems determined to be a friend to Edward. She is a wannabee playwright and talks about writing a role for him. One can feel his painful longing as she sits alongside him on the couch.
But sad, lonely Edward’s life is about to change, after his doctor signs him up for an experimental treatment that promises to ameliorate his condition. In fact it works spectacularly, allowing him to peel off his lumpy face – not without a good deal of pain and bloodletting – revealing the regular, handsome features of Sebastian Stan.
After our hero decides the old Edward is dead, we leap forward to a new life in which he is named “Guy”. Now a successful real estate agent, with a trendy apartment and a love life, fate takes another turn when he discovers that Ingrid has written a play called Edward, about a man with a disfigured face. She is holding auditions for the lead role and Guy can’t resist applying – after all, he is Edward. He gets the part, wearing a latex mask of his old face, and begins a relationship with Ingrid.
It's all going brilliantly until the day another man with a deformed face comes to the theatre. This is Oswald (Adam Pearson), who hasn’t allowed his neurofibromatosis to interfere with an extroverted, self-confident personality. Although Guy is now handsome and normal he finds himself shaping up poorly alongside Oswald in every other department. This confrontation becomes an obsession, taking hold of Guy’s life in catastrophic fashion.
As Oswald gradually supplants him in the play, and in Ingrid’s affections, Guy begins to feel that his entire identity has been wiped out by this charming newcomer, with his English accent, his fund of witty anecdotes, his vocal skills and his photographic memory. Oswald may look like a freak, but he’s freakishly talented. Guy begins to realise that as Edward he was excessively shy, polite and diffident, when perhaps he didn’t have to be that way. The truly maddening thought is that even with his new face, he is nothing but a mediocrity, a born loser. His ‘true’ self is – and always was – a non-event. Not only has this doppelgänger undermined Guy’s new life, he has destroyed his past as well. While doing so, Oswald remains completely charming and solicitous. He may be murdering Guy’s self-esteem, but he also wants to be a friend, brim-full of pity and concern.
When the lights go up, one’s first thought is: “What the hell was that??” It’s only upon reflection that all the little ironies and nuances of this story reveal themselves. There are only three main characters and they each have their flaws. Schimberg’s achievement lies in keeping us guessing for almost the entire film, as our conventional ideas are shredded. We see each personality as if through the eyes of the others. Is Edward to be pitied or condemned? Is Ingrid a mere opportunist, or a person of genuine sympathy? Is Oswald a shrewd manipulator, or a naturally charismatic personality? Are these terms mutually exclusive?
The quality of the acting is crucial to the ambiguities. Reinsve is excellent in the way she switches between sympathy and selfishness. Stan is outstanding in the complex, tortured role of Edward/Guy, while Pearson’s performance is utterly unique - the kind of role for which an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor is a real possibility.
There are so many obvious paths Schimberg could have taken with this story, but he sidesteps all of them, creating a movie that is consistently surprising in the way it bends our thoughts one way, then another. The most banal proposition would have been for Guy to realise, in defiance of the world, that what lies within is far more important than appearances. But if Oswald is our best example, the moral might be that a devious and determined intellect can overcome any physical obstacle, no matter how extreme. With Ingrid, her good deed in writing about a man trying to cope with a disfigured face, cannot be separated from her own ambitions to make a big splash in the theatre.
Guy is the Elephant Man in reverse, not insisting bitterly on his humanity, but feeling that he lost his identity when his disfigurement was cured. Despite the success he is enjoying in his new life, he can’t let go of Edward, becoming almost nostalgic for the miserable existence he escaped. That, somehow, was real, whereas “Guy” feels like a role he is playing. It’s only when Oswald proves to be a better “Edward”, that everything starts to unravel. It seems there’s a comfort in well-worn abjection that resists all physical cures.
A Different Man
Written & directed by Aaron Schimberg
Starring: Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve, Adam Pearson, Miles G. Jackson, Patrick Wang
USA, MA 15+, 112 mins