“A DIFFERENT MAN” - REVIEW

Within its first few minutes, A DIFFERENT MAN, with its grounded naturalism and slight dips into surrealism that kicks it off, reminded me of Spike Jonze’s 1999 film BEING JOHN MALKOVICH. Closer to the midway point, it started to evoke MALKOVICH scribe Charlie Kaufman‘s 2008 directorial debut SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK. And not much longer after that, I stopped thinking about both of those movies as it became its own wonderful thing.

Written and directed by Aaron Schimberg, this darkly funny and deceptively compassionate drama follows Edward (Sebastian Stan), an aspiring actor who we meet as he is filming a scene for a corporate training video about how to treat coworkers with physical deformities. Edward himself has a skin condition along the lines of neurofibromatosis, giving him an enlarged, rubbery face riddled with tumors and extra skin. Aside from most of the people in his building, his face often startles those who even bother to look him in the eye at all. He lives in a squalid New York apartment with a drippy ceiling that keeps getting worse. He has dreams of getting more acting roles, but success and confidence elude him. One day, Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), an effervescent, slightly self-involved playwright moves into the apartment right next-door to Edward, and they instantly make a connection: one motivated either by genuine friendship and curiosity, or by Ingrid’s dramatist tendency to see everything in her life as fodder for compelling theatre, or a bit of both.

Meanwhile, Edward is in a control group for an experimental new drug that is designed to completely restore his face, which, when it works quicker than imagined, changes everything for him. Under the guise of Guy, and looking like the very handsome Sebastian Stan that we all know, he pursues and achieves a successful real estate career, as well as the acting career success that for so long escaped him when he is cast in Ingrid‘s play, which chronicles the details of her real-life relationship with Edward. Things become further complicated when Guy and Ingrid begin a sexual relationship (suddenly, this man has no trouble getting laid). It all starts to be too much too soon, as his confident starts erode when, about one hour into A DIFFERENT MAN’s runtime, we meet Oswald (Adam Pearson), a charming Brit with a similar facial abnormality, but with none of the hangups that plague Edward/Guy.

On a basic level, A DIFFERENT MAN is a combination of the adages “beauty is skin deep” and “be careful what you wish for,” and thankfully the film is not content to leave it there. It offers up a strong exploration of the truth behind inner beauty, and the insecurity caused by suddenly getting everything you think you wanted, merely by the erasure of perceived flaws.

After terrific turns in I, TONYA and Hulu’s limited series PAM & TOMMY, Stan continues to be one of our most interesting young actors, taking on the sorts of roles one can when they A) let’s face it, have Marvel money, and more importantly B) want to take bold swings with characters like Edward/Guy, with a veneer that masks something less confident, insecure, and deeply bitter. A DIFFERENT MAN showcases Stan’s strongest work yet (Stan has another offering this fall, in the form of THE APPRENTICE in which he plays a young Donald Trump).

In a maybe slightly underwritten role, Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve continues to impress, and seems to be channeling the next evolution of her character Julie from her breakout role in Joachim Trier’s THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD. She oscillates between desire, ambition, calculated superficiality, and warmth, filling in the blanks with great ease.

As good as Stan and Reinsve are, Adam Pearson is the MVP, and absolutely steals the movie. I first saw Pearson, who has neurofibromatosis in real life, in Jonathan Glazer’s 2013 allegorical sci-fi UNDER THE SKIN. For as striking as his appearance is in Glazer’s vision, Pearson’s work with Schimberg (which also includes the 2018 film CHAINED FOR LIFE) does not cast him as an object of pity. In fact, the movie goes several steps further, fully integrating him and making Pearson’s Oswald not only the most magnetic character in this film, but easily the most magnetic and enviable person in anyone’s life. He is infectiously charismatic, adventurous, hilarious and, we gather from one brief interaction with a striking woman, a bit of a cad as well, but one who can get away with it because he A) has a delightful British accent, and B) deeply loves life, loves himself, and has deep wells of empathy for others, which is the biggest aspect that eludes Edward/Guy. Who’s more deformed, exactly?

Even writing all this feels a bit reductive to me, and A DIFFERENT MAN is to be experienced. Like the aforementioned works of Jonze and Kaufman, it uses absurdism as the vehicle, but what fills the tank and makes it go is less dour and pessimistic than Kaufman, and despite some fun filmmaking technique (the moody, jazzy score by Umberto Smerilli is a highlight), maybe a little less playful and fun than Jonze’s work. Schimberg’s film is a dark and provocative slow-burn with a lot of style, and a lot more on its mind. Some late-breaking surprises in the third act (like a priceless cameo which sent me through the roof) almost seem to be there to remind you that this is an A24 release, with its anything-can-happen-will-happen vibe. They are the types of developments that threaten to dismantle it, and while your mileage may vary, the final scene, and the final shot, helps bring it all together in what I found to be one of the most original and beautifully human films of the year.

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Zach is a proud member of the Minnesota Film Critics Alliance (MNFCA). For more info about Zach, the organization, or to read other great reviews from other great Minnesota-based film critics, click here: https://mnfilmcriticalliance.wordpress.com/