Hell, opined Sartre, is other people, and I am not here to argue with that. I am here to note that filmmaker Aaron Schimberg has made an excellent counterpoint to that idea with A DIFFERENT MAN, an engrossing trip to Hades that is archly, and self-referentially metaphorical as it discovers that Hell is also oneself. Schimberg is not going for realism here. Rather, he is using genuine anguish as the basis for a flight of fancy that is at once dark, perceptive, and absurdly funny.
It centers on Edward (Sebastian Stan), a passive man with a medical condition that has disfigured face. That is nothing to what Edward has done to his psyche as a result, internalizing his self-loathing as a defense mechanism and a refuge. It’s his excuse to cut himself off from any meaningful interaction with the world at large before he can get another pitying look or startle reflex of revulsion. That changes when two monumental events occur. First, his physician signs him up for a clinical trial that might cure his deformity. Second, his attractive new neighbor, Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), sees beyond the physical, which is to say she treats him the way she would anyone else, which is to say with an outgoing friendliness that soon has Edward going out for pizza and cracking jokes with her. More, Edward is an aspiring actor when he can find work, and Ingrid is a budding playwright who promises to write a part for him.
The rest of the world still reacts to Edward’s appearance, even one of the doctors in the clinical trial that eventually allows Edward to (literally) shed his old skin and emerge as a gorgeous hunk of man. Once that is complete, he also sheds his old identity, emerging from his cocoon of isolation after a night of profound debauchery and into a world of money, women, and the admiration of everyone around him. Renaming himself Guy and telling those who new Edward that his old self has died, what he hasn’t shed is his essential passivity, nor that internalized self-loathing despite the positive reinforcement the world now offers him.
This being a fable that embraces irony with the iron grip of a moray eel, fate steps in and Edward/Guy crosses paths again with Ingrid, who does not recognize him, but is casting the play she has written about his old identity. Further, this being the ci-mentioned fable, Edward/Guy is cast in the lead, forcing him to confront his old self with a perspective that is not his.
Schimberg wields irony with a surgeon’s precision as he cuts away pretense and exposes the physiological roots of our fear of the other, in this case those who don’t conform facially to the accepted norm. He does not, however, deem it an acceptable reason to accept such bias. Edward’s acting job in a corporate film designed for sensitivity training demeans the very individuals it intends to champion by reducing them to simpering wretches. His most potent weapon, though, is Oswald (Adam Pearson), a man with a condition similar to Edward’s, but who hasn’t let it interfere with his joie de vivre. He is, and I do hate this cliché, living his best life with yoga in the park and karaoke nights cheered on by his large circle of friends who clamor to be around him. Oswald neither ignores his condition, nor centers his life around it. It makes no more difference than the color of his hair. For Edward/Guy, it’s too much as he senses in Oswald what he himself lacks. He becomes obsessed with Oswald, stalking him after he becomes convinced that Oswald is stealing his life. But is it his old life as Edward or the new one as Oswald?
Stan is subtle and effective. Even when the prosthetic is removed allowing Guy to emerge, Stan’s body language, his demeanor beneath the backslapping and banter, has Edward’s tentative, wary edge. The new blowhard persona rings hollow for anyone interested enough in Guy to look closely or connect emotionally.
The film uses visual cues as well as signs and signals throughout, bringing ideas full circle, with call-backs and tangents that harmonize on an almost subliminal level. There is nothing coy about it, nor precious. Schimberg states his thesis at the start using minor characters and spends the rest of the film defending that thesis with deft aplomb and a subversive pedagogical idiom. In a sly bit of symbolism, Edward/Guy’s roiling id is made manifest by a street person (Marc Geller) demanding to know where everyone is going and refusing to be ignored. What the living statue impersonating Abe Lincoln represents, I leave to you. All that matters is that it works as an amuse-bouche of a diversion populating a landscape never meant to be confused with reality.
When, at the end, someone tells Edward/Guy that he hasn’t changed a bit, it’s not for our benefit. It’s for Edward/Guy’s, reflected in the look on Stan’s face, the million-mile stare as the devastating revelation kicks in. A DIFFERENT MAN is a work that combines pathos and revulsion, neither of which involves appearance, in a cocktail that can shock as well as amuse, disturb as well as enlighten.
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