KV: The last few years in cinema have delivered a bumper crop of kafkaesque dramadies in which the protagonist experiences senseless and absurd persecution for reasons that are clear to neither audience nor protagonist (most notably, Beau is Afraid and All My Friends Hate Me). For those of us with social anxiety and slight tendencies towards martyrdom, it’s just nice (read: bone-chillingly terrifying) to feel seen. Like the movies above, Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man exquisitely evokes the tension of feeling constantly observed, judged, and silently picked apart by acquaintances and strangers alike. The feeling of persecution is in some sense easier to pin down and name because the protagonist, Edward (Sebastian Stan), lives with a visible disability. Nevertheless, when Edward undergoes an experimental procedure to “cure” his neurofibromatosis, a condition which produces benign facial tumours, he finds that his feelings of anxiety and alienation don’t necessarily dissipate with the gory sloughing off of his facial growths. Zoe, could you give us a brief synopsis of the plot?

ZA: Okay, so Edward is living in New York, trying to make it as an actor, with little success beyond a role in a corporate instructional video on how to accommodate your disfigured colleagues in the workplace. He shrinks through the city between auditions and his increasingly decaying apartment, attempting to remain as unobtrusive and unremarkable as possible. His discomfort in interacting with people is palpable, as he preemptively winces away from potential cruelty inflicted upon him due to his appearance.

Edward has no real connections with the people around him until a beautiful playwright, Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), moves in next door. As they spend limited time together, Edward develops romantic feelings towards Ingrid, whereas Ingrid develops some combination of morbid curiosity, empathy, pity and ambivalence towards Edward. As this is happening, Edward has his annual medical check up, where his practitioner suggests that he participates in a trial for a drug that had previously been developed to treat androgenic alopecia, and could have great potential in treating his condition. Desperate after a mild rebuff from Ingrid, Edward resolves to participate in the trial, resulting in an agonisingly goopy set of sequences. Which brings us to a pressing question: Would you go through days of vomiting, crying and gouging off the bulk of your face IF at the end of it you looked like Sebastian Stan? It’s a toughy. Anyway, post yassification, Edward abandons his old life and reinvents himself as a classic hot guy with small dreams, a real estate agent called Guy. 

Guy has carved out a slightly above average life for himself, which is disrupted when he sees his previous life’s unrequited love, Ingrid, and follows her to where she is holding auditions for her original play ‘Edward’. It is tragic story of a man with a facial disfigurement, the intimacy between him and his beautiful neighbour and his eventual suicide. Upon questioning, she insists the character of Edward is completely fictional, if not semi-autobiographical. Guy auditions twice, once as he stumbles in having found the auditions, and the second time wearing a mask that was rendered of his face before the treatment, securing the role on the second audition. 

Edward’s slightly bigger dreams of being an actor and also starting a sexual relationship with Ingrid are coming true, everything might be okay, that is, until Oswald (Adam Pearson), a (ahem) different man with neurofibromatosis, enters the scene, having heard about the play. He is ostentatious and gregarious, frequently sporting neckerchiefs and kaftans. You could even say, the film is kaftan-esque. 

Anyway, that sets up the action. Katie, would love to hear some of your thoughts. 

KV: I love this movie so much. One of the most effective aspects for me is how powerfully the narrative conveys the oppressive unspokenness of Edward’s persecution. The plausible deniability that the people in his life wield as they discriminate against him creates a sense that he is being persistently gaslit by everyone he interacts with, and it is clear that this experience continues to shape his sense of his place in the world even after he undergoes the procedure. A constant refrain of disembodied laughter echoes throughout the movie, though it’s never clear whether this is directed at Edward or about something else entirely. In a diner where he and Ingrid are eating on a rainy night before he undergoes the procedure, each person hurrying past does a double take or stares at Edward, most notably a young man who leans in, leering and waving for an uncomfortably long time. Ingrid asks whether he knows the man, and when Edward says he does not, she feigns incredulity, as though she cannot imagine why a person might mockingly intrude into Edward’s life.

Similarly, Ingrid repeatedly makes comments about Edward’s skin that do not relate to his facial tumours (for example, that he has greasy skin or a pimple), as though she wants to convey to him that she finds his appearance troubling but does not want to admit to him or herself that the reason is his disability. When someone finally does explicitly make an overtly and disgustingly discriminatory comment about Oswald’s appearance in front of Edward/Guy, it almost comes as a relief to the audience and to Edward/Guy, who is finally able to confront head on the discrimination he has felt his entire life. 

Edward’s inability to cope with the mealy mouthed ill-treatment he experiences at the hands of the people in his life is made all the more difficult with the introduction of Oswald, who does not seem to notice or be troubled by similar treatment. Arguably occupying the role of the model minority, Oswald’s ease, happiness and success seem to cause Edward/Guy to wonder in fact his life had been so desperately unhappy because he’s actually just quite a boring and morose person.

It bears saying that I don’t know how much was lost on me as a person who does not live with a disability, but boy there is a lot to unpack with this movie regardless.

What are your thoughts, Zoe?

ZA: Totally, I actually read in an interview that Schimberg was inspired to make this film in part due to his own existential crisis after working with Pearson previously. Schimberg was born with a cleft palate and, like Edward, feels the pervasive ambiguity as to whether people are treating him differently because of his disfigurement. Working with Pearson — who is, like Oswald, extroverted and universally beloved — he was left with the dreaded and familiar questions: Am I doing something wrong, or is this just the way I am? I think that to me speaks to the universal themes of A Different Man, the hopeful delusion that if you looked different or had a better apartment you’d be different or happy or that people would treat you better, followed by the inescapable and crushing reality that you are still and will always be you.  

A Different Man is truly a rich text. I loved the function of the play within the movie, allowing for Schimberg to engage in the dialogue around able-bodied people taking roles from people with disabilities, as well as the potentially exploitative and bordering on fetishistic nature of casting people with disabilities, parodied very uncomfortably by Ingrid. Oswald’s character’s obnoxiousness, loudness and charm are a far cry from the trope of the shy, sad man with a disability we see in Edward (and have seen Pearson play in Under The Skin) and this divergence is the tipping point for Edward/Guy’s true descent. 

I also love the Polanski-like interrogation into the oppressive and isolating nature of apartment living, and the psychic damage their inhabitants endure. Edward’s initial apartment is decaying on top of him and despite a brief interlude, he eventually returns to live in it. Throughout the film almost all his living conditions become as inescapable as his identity.

KV: Absolutely, and I agree, I loved the introduction of the play’s nested retelling of (a version of) the story, which seems to echo to some degree the real life dynamics of making A Different Man. The layers of embedded narrative become even more muddled when Michael Shannon is nearly engaged to play the role of Edward in a movie adaptation of the play, which never comes to pass, and the main players have a conversation about how he will be made up to look as though he too has neurofibromatosis. Many years later, once the play has laid the groundwork to propel Ingrid into fame and fortune, she will tell Edward/Guy how ashamed she now is to have written it. Now that she has wrung all she can out of his story, it costs her little to make this admission, though it is obvious to everyone including Edward/Guy that he has not been able to move on in the way that she has.

Every scene in this movie strikes an incredible balance between tense, sinister and very funny, in large part because of the performances. Pearson and Reinsve are both the perfect mixture of charming and annoying, and the shrinking and meek physicality of Stan ties the two halves of the movie together very skillfully. All in all, this is a banger.

ZA: Completely agree, and before we go too overboard heaping praise on this film, I just want to also shout out how meticulously it’s constructed. Special mentions to the camerawork (there are some very funny hard zoom shots onto Stan’s gormless face) and the music. The soundtrack by Umberto Smerilli is atmospheric and impeccable, and is deliciously employed to further blur the lines between the play, the film and the filmmakers when Oswald starts playing the saxophone line (seemingly one of his many hobbies). 

I really love this movie. Run, don’t self consciously shuffle, to see A Different Man.

 

A Different Man is currently playing in cinemas.