The Difference Men
dir: Aaron Shimberg
2024
A Different Man now joins the pantheon of films about various allegedly interesting men. A Single Man. A Serious Man. A Simple Man. A Family Man. A Fortunate Man. A Lucky Man. A Common Man. A Company Man. A Most Wanted Man. A Man Apart. A Man Called Otto. And finally, simply A Man, a recent Japanese film. A Different Man now nestles in between all of those “A”s and “Man”s. So many mans you’d think it was a gritty modern update on the Mr Men books, probably directed by Zach Snyder, with more of a focus on rugged individualism.
That’s not at all to be confused with the other “Man” films, being the ones that start with “The”. The Thin Man, The Fat Man, The Tall Man, The Third Man, The Quiet Man, The Empty Man, The Snow Man, The Elephant Man, The Gray Man, The King’s Man, The Running Man, The Railway Man and oh so many more mans. So many movies about men, and their many foibles and peccadillos. It’s almost like so much of cinema is so man-centric. No idea why that might be.
Sebastian Stan stars as the Man of this Different Man, playing a man with a facial difference, due to neurofibromatosis. He gets some work as an actor, but his life is a fairly quiet, fearful one. His appearance often brings shock, or terror, or ridicule from members of the public, which isn’t fair. He has a new Norwegian neighbour, Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), and has some awkward interactions with her. We notice, like he notices, how horrified she is when she first sees him.
She is something of a piece of work. I have only otherwise seen her as the lead in a film called, no shit, I’m not making this up, The Worst Person in the World, and let me just say that there are actions and dialogue her character performs here that is far worse than anything in that earlier film. She is… an aspiring playwright, and Edward’s an aspiring actor, so he urges her, even down to giving her his typewriter, to work and dazzle the world. Little does he suspect what she’s actually going to do, the depths she’s going to stoop to.
That’s unfair, but she’s not the true villain in this story. Edward (Stan) lives a strange life in a strange world. So many weird things happen in the first part of the movie, that I really wasn’t sure that what we were watching on screen were actually happening to the character, or whether they were hallucinations on Edward’s part, or whether we were hallucinating as audience members, maybe? I haven’t been this curiously perplexed since watching the first hour of Beau Is Afraid, where I kept saying to myself “Surely, this can’t be happening for real in that character’s world, can it?”
And, to that end, despite there being no such existing treatment, within the context of the film a group of medical jerks have lucked upon a possible treatment for neurofibromatosis. Nothing like that actually exists, so this section I guess must be regarded as science fiction, but I would never say that the flick is a sci fi one. And it leads to some scenes that I think you could only call body horror, even though this is not a horror flick by any means.
At the end of Edward’s transformation, he loses all the heavy flesh from his face, and now looks like Sebastian Stan, but he mostly seems to carry himself as he did previously. And another “thing” happens in the story which seems unlikely, because he just says a bunch of words to people and everyone accepts them as a given, and no-one checks, but considering his rapid transformation (into a person who doesn’t have a significant facial difference), he tells the doctor who was running the experiment that Edward died, and Ingrid overhears, thinking that this must be true.
No-one thus knows that Edward has transformed, so the new man he is, helpfully calling himself “Guy” is accepted by the world. He even gets a job in real estate, and is very successful.
And yet when he sees Ingrid going into a theatre, and realises that she’s in the early stages of finalising a play she wrote about Edward, he feels obligated to get the lead role, because something tells him it was written for the old him.
Conveniently, as part of the medical process he underwent, they made latex masks of what he looked like, so he still has something to let him relive his previous state, which would seem to be appropriate in the life story (of his) that Ingrid has appropriated. And yet most of what she’s written is quite horrible towards him, but he must be the one who relives it.
Just as this happens, a chap who lives with a significant facial difference, and who has the same condition that Edward had, comes to the rehearsals, starts hanging out with Edward/Guy and Ingrid’s circle, and is charming, confident and funny where Edward never was and never will be.
He can’t accept or even fathom how it is that Oswald (Adam Pearson) can get through life with charisma and confidence when he never could have previously, he feels. And so Oswald becomes a mirror through which Edward darkly views himself as still wanting in all departments.
It would almost be comical, if it wasn’t so painfully ironic. A man unable to appreciate what he has now ends up trying to harm other people out of jealousy. They do say that comparison is the thief of joy, and Edward cannot get over his resentment towards Oswald.
He has anger towards a world that he feels could never accept him as he was, which embraces Oswald so readily. What’s the difference? Is it just the fact that Oswald is so charming, or is it the accent?
Naturally Edward feels supplanted by Oswald, but that’s only because of his entitled belief that he is owed the lead role in Ingrid’s play, despite the fact that it would make more sense to have Oswald in the role. And yet the ethical question of what is appropriate when you’re casting roles in a play, or, let’s say a movie, like A Different Man, about a character with a facial difference, do you cast a known person, like, say Sebastian Stan, or should you be casting an actor like Adam Pearson? Does this film both comment on this aspect, and neatly sidestep the issue by having Adam Pearson feature so significantly in the flick, and then essentially take over Edward/Guy’s life? Why yes, that is ironic.
Edward ends up doing some terrible things, not least of which involves developing his British accent in order to mimic Oswald, and wearing the latex mask even in professional settings in order to look like Oswald, and that pretty much puts an end to his career. But he still has further to fall.
The ending is… wow, no spoilers, but it’s of a piece with a fairly strange and fairly enjoyable film that commits to telling its story about some people just not being able to be grateful for what they’ve got, and other people doing the best they can with what they have and reaching contentment, and good for them. This is not a flick that will engage with mainstream audiences, and that’s fine. It’s great to see Adam Pearson get such a substantial role in a flick, and to have the opportunity to act beyond what most roles give him in films.
7 times I too want Michael Shannon to play me in a biopic about my life out of 10
--
“Oh, my friend, you haven’t changed a bit” - A Different Man
- 1042 reads