'A Different Man' is an absurdist yet ambitious take on the power of our looks
Even Sebastian Stan can feel jealousy towards a deformed man.
Looks aren’t everything, but they soak up a lot of moisture in the room regardless of the weight we give them. They’re what we’re born into and face the rest of the world with, an image to cast out a perception about our personality. The likeness of one’s face and their body image cast a long shadow on someone, making it feel like the entirety of what they offer exists in a passing glance.
For Edward (Sebastian Stan), people’s first look at him always carries an ounce of pity and a handful of contempt. Deformed with only one full eye’s worth of vision, Edward is a working actor who doesn’t venture far out of his shell to connect with others due to his appearance. When you hear the cackles and comments right after you pass someone, the verdict is in for someone like Edward, even if the reality may be different.
Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man takes a near science fiction premise and mixes it with an early Woody Allen film aesthetic to offer a dark comedic view on the face and its weighty first impressions. While offering Stan another multi-faceted role to climb into, Schimberg digs away at the human conscience surrounding a fellow human who doesn’t look like most people.
It’s only when an operation and drug is administered that could completely fix Edward, aka make him suddenly look like Sebastian Stan, that he thinks about an actual shot/date with his inquisitive neighbor, Ingrid (Renate Reinsve from The Worst Person in the World). He also finds out how distorted people’s perception towards him can be once he’s a normal-looking fella again. A quick yet non-preachy viewpoint is dished in Schimberg’s film, which runs a long-winded 110 minutes.
The movie works best when it leans into the absurdist comic take on the situation. Seeing Edward, facially revived and mixing into public space, get wild and crazy with a group of sports fans is funny. Seeing his face literally peel off doesn’t stray too far into gross town, because the sequence is played more for laughs than horrors. While the overall tone may fluctuate too much to be a true cohesive force, A Different Man takes chances and collects unexpected laughs and heart from a premise that could have been mishandled.
Credit Alex Pearson, who plays the dashing Oswald, someone who comes into the film about midway and flips everything on its head. After undergoing the procedure to change everything, Edwards finds his paths cross with Oswald, who happens to be deformed exactly like Stan’s character used to be. Yet somehow, Oswald doesn’t experience the society roadblocks and landmines that Edwards once dealt with. A ladies man and better actor, Oswald sees few troubles in life.
Ingrid’s playwright gets to tackle these two different yet oddly similar guys with a twisty interpretation that takes some interesting turns in the second and third acts. You like to see Stan taking these kinds of risks after first breaking onto the scene as a Marvel character. Next up, he’ll portray Donald Trump. Taking the shy Edward on this quietly maddening descent into a modern day Greek tragedy brought out a lot of his range.
A Different Man doesn’t have a LOT going on or a TON to say, and almost loses its way an hour into the movie, but it breaks into new ground with a laidback sensibility that doesn’t mind going to weird places for humor. Performance driven, it has the confidence that its lead lacks. It won’t find too many spots on a year end awards list for me, but that doesn’t make it any less intriguing to watch. If the face-melting doesn’t scare you off, the movie may be up your alley.