Is the world against you, or are you simply the problem? How can you be expected to love anyone if you don’t love yourself? And what does it really mean to be a good person? These are some of the questions raised in A24’s latest release, “A Different Man.”
The third feature film from director Aaron Schimberg demonstrates an original, darkly funny take on identity and self-love, making “A Different Man” one of the most quintessentially A24 films of the year.
We meet Edward (Sebastian Stan), a meek and nervous aspiring actor with neurofibromatosis — a genetic condition that causes benign tumors to grow on his body. He lives in a dingy apartment with a ghastly ceiling leak, spending his days eating microwaveable dinners in front of the TV or learning how to whistle from a YouTube video. His new neighbor Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), a sunny, quirky aspiring playwright from Norway, gasps at the first sight of him. When Edward develops a crush on Ingrid and things go miserably awry, he decides to try out a cutting-edge medical procedure for his neurofibromatosis, allowing him to literally shed his skin and his old life — transforming into a new character named Guy.
When Edward, in his new life as Guy, comes across a play entitled “Edward,” he’s forced to confront his past. His situation becomes even more complicated when the fantastically positive Oswald (Adam Pearson) saunters into his life, representing everything Edward tried to bury about his old self — including his condition. Oswald has everything Edward wanted in his past life, and the rest of the film follows Edward’s downward spiral of obsession with reclaiming what could’ve been his.
The greatest strength of “A Different Man,” however, is its hilarious and detail-oriented screenplay. The film is full of callbacks to earlier scenes and monologues that playfully wink at the audience. A dead rat that fell from the ceiling into a bucket of brown water in his old apartment is paralleled with a dead roach in a coffee cup in Edward’s new, modern Manhattan high-rise. Edward’s monologue from an old film about yearning for love but only seeing your shadow on the wall precedes the scene where Edward is left with his own dark, looming shadow after scaring Ingrid off.
These narrative details, accompanied by moody, washed-out color grading and a melancholic, bluesy score are some of the elements that make “A Different Man” narratively distinct while maintaining a cohesive style.
Stan delivers one of his best and most unhinged performances yet as Edward, slowly but surely unraveling throughout the course of the film. He shines when he goes fully hysterical, showing an apartment to a family while wearing a mask of his old face. Stan fully embodies the role, bouncing hilariously off of the relentlessly chipper, infuriatingly talented Oswald — the pair are stellar together on screen.
However, while the screenplay and cast are strong, “A Different Man” ultimately fails to be emotionally impactful or moving. Despite the fascinating themes, characters and central premise, the film is more concerned with humor than exploring the melancholic reality of the story. The idea of finally becoming the person you always wanted to be, but finding that you’re unhappy even then, is a fear and feeling that is familiar to many — yet the film and its characters don’t tap into that shared emotion. For this reason, “A Different Man” leaves audiences relatively unmoved.
However, the lack of emotional impact could be Schimberg insisting that none of his characters are victims. The film opens up the possibility of more nuanced and colorful portrayals of illness in media, rather than the dominant narrative that people with conditions like neurofibromatosis are victims in need of an audience’s pity. It’s still rare to see stories like this in the film industry, but “A Different Man” is a step in the right direction with its thought-provoking screenplay, its stellar cast and its ability to elicit laughter through absurdity.
Contact Lulu Chatterjee at [email protected].