A Different Man (Literally) Strips Away How We Look at Disfigurement
He’s played Tommy Lee and Trump. Now Sebastian Stan tackles a new tortured soul: a disfigured man who gets a tantalising second chance.
good.film
2 months ago
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Admit it: we all have little fantasies about being someone else. Of looking different, or having different skills. And like a great dream where you’ve discovered you can fly, or impress the cute guy/girl at the bar with your impeccable rizz, movies can take us there, for that escape. It’s basically why superhero flicks are so popular (or were… thanks a LOT, Joker: Folie à Deux).
A Different Man trades on that vicarious delight with a delicious paradox: take a character who feels outcast because of his looks, and then – voila. Melt away his differences. Would he suddenly fit in? Would his life instantly turn around? Or is “success” far more than skin deep?
With his third feature, New York writer-director Aaron Schimberg creates a tantalising fantasy with oodles to say about perception, identity and inner happiness. His dark comic story peers deep into how we deal with “otherness” in society – and how we often revert, in our private moments, to letting our exteriors define who we are inside.
What is A Different Man about?
They say you need thick skin as an actor – but not like this. Edward (played under convincing prosthetic makeup by Sebastian Stan) is an aspiring actor with prominent facial tumours that engulf his entire head. Unless a sequel to The Elephant Man comes along, Edward is stuck playing small parts in things like workplace training videos, where the narration soothes the discomfort of “regular” people who work alongside folks with facial differences (“Be gentle with yourself – we have no control over the fight or flight responses of our reptilian brain”).
It’s a grim existence, until a double dose of hope suddenly appears. A breezy and beautiful playwright, Ingrid (Cannes Best Actress winner Renate Reinsve) moves in next door, and Edward’s specialist tells him about a fantastically promising new treatment that could reverse the growth of his tumours and totally transform his appearance. With a normal visage, surely Edward could convince Ingrid to write him a juicy part – and perhaps more?
Soon, Edward’s a brand new man, and the role of a lifetime lands at his feet. It’s the lead part in a new off-Broadway stage play… one he actually inspired Ingrid to write. About a shy man with a severe facial deformity. It’s the role he was born to play – but not anymore.
A Different Man wrestles with the implications of this awful irony. Who IS Edward, now that he’s not the “freak” that gets stares on the train? Do people only like him because he’s handsome? And what’s the deal with Oswald – the disfigured man he meets who’s naturally upbeat and admired, despite his looks?
How does A Different Man explore society’s relationship with disability and disfigurement?
Using “before and after” versions of Edward means A Different Man gets to interrogate the psychology of fitting in. It’s asking, is a miracle “cure” even about making Edward feel more normal – or is it more about making others more comfortable, seeing fewer disfigured faces in our society? Discussing the new treatment, Edward’s specialist tells him “Perhaps the risk is worth the reward. Something to think about.” Using the word “reward” for a delicate medical procedure is definitely a choice!
When Ingrid first meets Edward, she inadvertently gasps – but as we learn, she’s not a rude person. It’s human nature to be startled by difference. Later, they head out to eat together in front of a big plate glass window, and every single passerby turns to stare as they walk past. Edward doesn’t notice (imagine how much he’s learned to tune out over the years), but the way the scene is framed, we notice every time. We begin to feel what being the subject of morbid fascination is like.
For writer-director Aaron Schimberg, the subject is deeply personal: he has a corrected bilateral cleft lip and palate, which left its mark not only on how others see him, but on how he views the world. “As facial disfigurements go, mine is one of the most common, yet I’ve only seen depictions of people like me that are negative or insulting,” Schimberg explains. “As far back as I can remember, I’ve wondered: how do I present someone like myself positively, or at least realistically to my own experience?”
He does it with a casting masterstroke, introducing British actor and advocate Adam Pearson as Oswald – an outgoing chap who becomes Edward’s part-doppelganger, part-nemesis. In real life, Pearson lives with neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that caused tumours to grow on his nerve tissue, resulting in drastic affects to his face. The prosthetic make-up team, led by Oscar-nominee Mike Marino, modelled the facial prosthetics worn by Sebastian Stan on Pearson’s own appearance. It lends A Different Man a genuine authenticity.
Schimberg squeezes some other juicy thought exercises into his film via Ingrid’s play. She writes it based on Edward and his life, despite having no real experience with disability herself. At least she seems to recognise her sense of entitlement (even if she’s just running cover) by asking hypothetically during rehearsals, “Is it wrong to cast someone because of their disfigurement? Exploitative, even? Where's the line?”
In a love scene on stage, Ingrid directs Edward to be more shy – and an irritated Edward calls her out on it. “Why is he inexperienced?” he needles her. “Maybe he’s had a rich life? Oh, he’s ugly, so of course he's depressed, right?” It’s a pointed insight into the painful stereotypes projected onto the disabled community – and the assumptions made by well-meaning “normies” who don’t really know what they’re talking about.
“In a sense, Edward becomes a kind of imposter confronted by something real and authentic. There’s a sense of the passing of the torch, from actors play-acting disabilities to disabled actors playing who they want to play.”
~ Writer/Director Aaron Schimberg
What does A Different Man have to say about masculinity and identity?
Like an alien in a new body, things shift radically for Edward when he walks outside with his new face. It’s a bit like those classic superhero scenes where the hero discovers his powers for the first time. Wait, are good looks a superpower? He catches his reflection in a shop window and literally adjusts his posture; standing taller, shoulders prouder. The message is clear: he’s a new man. And “man” is the operative word.
For men in the disabled or facially different community, one common trait is the difficulty they experience in matching societal norms of masculinity. Before his treatment, Edward is shy and soft spoken, with hunched shoulders; understandably, he’s a wallflower. Now, he has no reason to hide. When a pack of sports bros burst into the local bar after a baseball game, Edward is startled to realise he can easily “pass” for one of them. Instead of being ostracised, he experiences something new: platonic male bonding.
He’s more attractive to the opposite sex, too, including Ingrid – who pulled away when Edward showed her affection before his facial transformation. Confusingly, Ingrid pauses Edward during sex and asks him to wear a prop from their play: a mask modelled on his OLD FACE. It throws questions into the air like birdseed – is Ingrid more attracted to the “old Edward” now that he’s gone? Is she making love to her own play’s character? Ingrid pretty much takes the words out of our mouth when she says, laughing out loud, “This is so fucked up.”
Edward’s split identity is fractured even further when Oswald appears. Outgoing, confident, and humorous, Oswald is everything Edward isn't, and everything he wants to be. Oswald’s fun nature and gravitational pull naturally shows Edward up as… well, as just a bit dull. We’re wondering, Was it really his face that was holding him back – or was it his personality? And is it possible to separate one from the other?
It’s reminiscent of Richard Ayoade’s 2013 film The Double, where a timid government clerk is intrigued by a new colleague who’s his exact physical replica, but far more confident and charismatic. In A Different Man, Schimberg takes the idea further, exploring how Edward’s entire sense of self begins to unravel when he’s confronted with a person that looks the way he used to, but refuses to be constrained by it.
“Identity is such a deep and rich topic to play with, narratively. Who we are on the outside? Who we are on the inside? And what happens when those two worlds don’t necessarily operate in parity?”
~ Actor and disability advocate Adam Pearson
How does A Different Man use tone to enhance the story?
So is A Different Man a dark comedy? A social drama? Or more of a psychological horror? While the film doesn’t fit neatly into one box, it definitely straddles all three. At different points in the story, Schimberg leans from one tone to the other to elevate the mood he wants us to feel.
Take the social drama aspect. There’s a recurring theme of Edward observing people throughout the story – in his apartment building, in the park, as he’s walking through the city. He’s not a voyeur, exactly, but he does seem fascinated by others. Is this the inverse of Edward always being stared at himself? Or is he fixated on their appearance because he yearns to melt into crowds, like they can?
On the horror side, Schimberg matches Edward’s cramped apartment to his mental state. There’s a crumbling wet hole in the ceiling that grows mouldier as Edward comes and goes. He merely puts a bucket under the drips – perhaps he feels powerless to fix it. When Edward finally takes action, a dead rat falls out. Call it foreshadowing for the scene when Edward’s tumours start loosening, and he literally begins to peel his face off in stringy strips. Whether real or imagined, it’s up there with cinema’s most memorably horrifying special FX.
Don’t run for the exits though. This isn’t The Substance, and it’s obvious that A Different Man prizes humour more than most. Like when Ingrid decides to nix the mask from her play, saying “It was contrived, the audience feels cheated!” – a meta dig at the film’s own reliance on masks and make-up. In a different scene, Edward lunges at Oswald in a comic scuffle, and the next cut reveals Edward in a full body cast. It’s amusing for us, but for Edward it’s yet another irony: his face might be perfect, but he’s still just as “trapped” as before.
"When you’re dealing with this type of subject, you have to devise various strategies to disarm people. That’s how you provoke questions and deeper conversations about what you just experienced. And that’s what I really like to do with my films.”
~ Writer/Director Aaron Schimberg
What are critics saying about A Different Man?
“This intriguing picture veers into the surreal to explore themes of identity, authenticity and the nature of beauty.”
- Wendy Ide, Observer
“Schimberg brilliantly anticipates every ethical qualm you might have, and lobs them all back at the audience like water bombs.”
- Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph
“Makes us rethink how we look at people and ourselves alike – and who’s to blame when we don’t like the view.”
- Brian Truitt, USA Today
So what’s the takeaway from A Different Man?
It’s complex and layered, yet the core idea of A Different Man is simple – perception. It only takes a casual scroll through Instagram to prove that, in thousands of ways, we're still so hung up on our appearance being the cause of (or solution to) our problems. But with his story, Aaron Schimberg underlines that our choices and potential lie inside of us, not on our faces. He even based the jovial Oswald’s personality on the man who plays him, Adam Pearson.
“Adam changed my view about my own disfigurement,” the director says. “I’ve always lived with a certain sense of shame. Adam takes control of the way he wishes to be perceived. And that’s changed me.”
Unlike Joseph Merrick – the real life “Elephant Man”, whose deformities saw him displayed as a travelling oddity – Edward hits the jackpot. A painless, borderline magical treatment gifts him a new face, and removes his shackles as an extreme societal outlier. He literally becomes “undisabled” – a change in circumstances almost no-one ever gets. But what it didn’t automatically grant him was respect, or adulation or acclaim. They’re things we have to earn.
A Different Man wants us to ponder if Edward is better off than he was before. Is he a victim of society’s need for normalcy – or a victim of his own victim complex? Bringing him side by side with Oswald gives us a unique chance to decide, before they go their separate ways. It’s only years later at a chance meeting that we weigh them up again, and Oswald delivers a line soaked in poetic schadenfreude: “Ah, my old friend! You haven't changed a bit.”
Want a great deal to catch A Different Man in cinemas?
GRAB YOUR DOUBLE PASS DEAL HERE!
