REVIEW: A Different Man [2024]

Rating: R | Runtime: 112 minutes
Release Date: September 20th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: A24
Director(s): Aaron Schimberg
Writer(s): Aaron Schimberg

I don’t want to dilute the medicinal value.

It’s not just that Edward (Sebastian Stan) tries to hide whenever he’s being perceived by the public at-large. He tries to hide even when he’s not. If someone talks to him, he does everything he can to not talk back. If even the smallest sound is heard in the distance, he startles like a bomb went off. This is the life he’s had to live with neurofibromatosis—never knowing if someone is going to ruin his day by making him feel less than just for existing. Edward is a raw nerve letting the world’s narrow idea of “normal” dictate his every movement, constantly expecting the other shoe to drop rather than taking control for himself. Like so many, not even he can get past his own appearance.

So, writer/director Aaron Schimberg provides a solution via an experimental procedure that may allow Edward to lose the tumors and look like everyone else. As the title eludes, he’s presented the opportunity to become A Different Man. And therein lies the inherent problem since there was nothing wrong with him in the first place. He simply saw his shortcomings as physical when they were actually psychological. He let his physical deformity dictate his persona—so much so that he’d rather tell everyone who knew him before the transformation that “Edward” died than admit he was still himself. No, now he was Guy. A regular Joe. Dating, selling, earning, and leaving his entire past behind.

Except, of course, for Ingrid (Renate Reinsve). She was the reason he even tried the experiment. Edward’s desire to be with her when he knew he couldn’t regardless of their friendship remained. And now that he looked “normal,” he could. Not only that, he does. But what he didn’t understand then was that the steady stream of men who darkened her door meant nothing to her. They came and went, while her friendship with him remained. So, while Edward might now be in her bed as “Guy,” is he really in her life? Is he someone who’s indispensable to her? Because, as we soon learn, Edward was. She’s written an entire play about him, bringing his essence to the stage as a tribute to a lost soul.

Or has she? That’s the beauty of Schimberg’s film: everything possesses a duality with the potential to reveal how nothing is ever quite what it seems. Edward’s bond with Ingrid was stronger than it is as Guy. Ingrid’s “aw shucks” aspiring writer might have begun her play as a tribute, but the idea that it could be produced and ignite her career has a way of pushing the real Edward out so that the new “Edward”—a creation she proclaims was hers alone and actually more about herself than anyone in her life—can take the spotlight. It therefore makes total sense that she’d cast Guy in the role. A man pretending to be the man he didn’t want to be to achieve everything he couldn’t but now could.

Well, at least until the arrival of Oswald (Adam Pearson). Because rather than be one version of himself at the expense of another, this UK transplant with neurofibromatosis embraces all versions simultaneously. He doesn’t let his appearance detract from his ambition. He doesn’t let it destroy his confidence. He doesn’t let it control him. But he’s also just a really great dude who sees Guy wearing a mask that makes him look like Edward (and like Oswald since Pearson serves as the inspiration for it all) and applauds the performance rather than scream exploitation. He applauds Ingrid’s words. He’s simply tickled by the whole thing. And the more his charisma shines, the more Guy falls back into the introverted, angry, and scared Edward all over again.

A Different Man proves a relevant commentary on our world’s penchant to “other” those outside a given norm, but also an increasingly zany satire on our ability to “other” ourselves. Because experiencing the life Oswald leads should be an inspiration for Guy. It should unlock something in him that will allow him to move past both his insecurities and his imitations. What it does instead, though, is amplify those feelings of shame and of being an imposter. Oswald earning everything Edward thought the “Guys” of this world took from him makes it so he cannot think straight. Suddenly Guy goes from having two identities to having none at all. His own actions erase him from existence while the actions of a man who looks exactly like he did flourishes.

It’s an entertaining journey with Stan excelling three-fold as the shy recluse, uncertain heartthrob, and cracked result upon discovering neither is real. The only honest thing is his self-hatred. The way Schimberg balances the script by making Stan’s Edward the straight man losing his mind as everyone surrounding him seems to be doing the exact opposite of what his own preconceptions perceive is genius. Reinsve is the perfect hollow façade (the Guy Edward sought to become) while Pearson perfectly epitomizes modesty, empathy, and charity (the Edward Edward couldn’t become)—two farcical opposites Edward cannot stop thinking are laughing at him because he’s always laughed at himself. Their actions are so over-the-top by comparison that Edward’s incredulity can ultimately only birth more self-destruction.