by Sophie Terakes
Worth: $18.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve, Adam Pearson
Intro:
… thought-provoking, wryly funny and wild.
Partway through A Different Man, a wide-shot shows Oswald (Adam Pearson) singing karaoke on the stage of a small New York City bar. He sways in a pool of light, the wall of red glitter behind him bathing his form in a rosy shimmer. Guy (Sebastian Stan) watches alone from the audience with an expression of deflated jealousy. A vision of confidence, worldliness and charm, Oswald is everything Guy wants to become.
Aaron (Chained for Life) Schimberg’s latest film tells the tale of Guy’s vain attempt to become the hero of his own story, and the madness he sows in the process.
Guy’s story, however, begins long before the scene in the bar. Audiences are first introduced to Edward (played by Stan in prosthetics), a shy, struggling actor with facial tumours caused by his neurofibromatosis. He is quietly in love with his new, bubbly next-door neighbour Ingrid (Renate Reinsve). Edward’s dreams ostensibly come true when he takes an experimental drug that ‘heals’ his face, transforming him into a successful and conventionally handsome real estate agent named Guy. Unsurprisingly, though, in spite of his newfound good looks, Guy remains dissatisfied with himself.
In a wonderfully bizarre turn, Ingrid stages a Charlie Kaufman-esque play based on the previous half of the film. Guy is cast as his (past) self, but the role is swiftly stolen by Oswald, a charismatic, brightly-dressed Englishman with Edward’s very craniofacial condition. Oswald, uninhibited by his different face, is a better Edward than Edward/Guy both on and off the stage.
The latter half of the film sees Guy desperately attempt to reclaim his original face and remake himself into Oswald. Mimicking his karaoke-singing foe, Guy dons bright clothes, feigns an English accent and wears a prosthetic mask of his former neurofibromatosis-effected visage. Schimberg does an excellent job of capturing the mounting freneticism of Guy’s obsession via the camera. The lens repeatedly rushes towards Oswald as though trying to catch him before skittering and drawing back, forever buzzing with a palpable sense of agitated inspiration.
Tonally, the film itself is constantly transforming too. Possessed by the weird, inexplicable logic of a dream, A Different Man boldly morphs from a Gothic nightmare to a macabre comedy to a piece of mind-bending meta-cinema. It lunges at an array of lofty ideas, exploring questions of self-acceptance, exploitation and authenticity, all the while lampooning the narrowness of conventional beauty standards. Yet, just as Edward never fully becomes Oswald, the film never allows any one of these issues to overwhelm the story. Rather, it tries each one on for size and walks around in it, thoughtfully pulling and prodding at the idea’s flesh to see where it may lead.
A Different Man dissects the mutability of human identity with curiosity and nerve, plumbing the depths of Guy’s frantic desire to inhabit another (better) version of himself. Guy may not emerge as the film’s ultimate hero, nor does he successfully steal Oswald’s je ne sais quoi, but his journey towards self-understanding nevertheless proves thought-provoking, wryly funny and wild.
