Toward the beginning of “A Different Man,” Edward (Sebastian Stan) experiences the very real, very relatable fear of being perceived on public transportation.
But Edward has more cause than most to be concerned. He has neurofibromatosis, numerous growths and tumors covering almost the entirety of his face. As the subway rumbles on, Edward attracts attention in the type of way that renders him invisible. He catches a woman staring at him, and she quickly looks away. The man in front of him is wearing sunglasses, staring in Edward’s general direction with a slight smirk – is he laughing at Edward? Is he asleep? Is he blind? He doesn’t interact with Edward, so there’s no way to know for sure. A homeless man walks through the train, interacting with everyone he passes, and Edward sinks into his seat to avoid being seen. The homeless man skips him by.
For Edward, however, the desire to be seen complicates the desire not to be. He’s an aspiring actor. A casting director stops the homeless man on the train – he specializes in interesting-looking people, and he wants to give the man his card. Edward observes the exchange silently, completely ignored by both parties.
There’s an episode of “30 Rock” where Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon dates an extremely handsome man (played by the extremely handsome Jon Hamm), and discovers the existence of The Bubble, a sort of alternate reality for very attractive people – a world where cops tear up their parking tickets, and people send them free drinks all the time. “30 Rock” takes the bit past its logical end point, but it would be a lie to say that conventionally attractive people aren’t treated a little differently from everyone else. But writer/director Aaron Schimberg’s “A Different Man” posits that even if you’re as good looking as, say, Sebastian Stan, beauty can only do so much. And a deeply insecure actor is the perfect focal point for a caustically funny satire about theater, self loathing, and societal expectation.
When Edward is invited to join an experimental medical trial, he jumps at the chance and quickly evolves into a new, “normal” version of himself. Once his transformation is complete, he decides to fake his own death. He’s got nothing to lose – just a cat and an awkward, semi-friendship with his nextdoor neighbor, a playwright named Ingrid (Renate Reinsve) – so he gets a new life and a new name (the aptly-chosen Guy). When he learns that Ingrid has written a play about her brief relationship with Edward and is looking for actors with his specific condition, he auditions. Despite his now blemish-free face, Edward lands the role. But his new circumstances are complicated by the appearance of an actor named Oswald (Adam Pearson) – confident, boisterous, and charming Oswald, who just so happens to have the same condition that Edward left behind.
It’s impossible to ignore the supremely meta undertones of everything up above. Stan spends the first act of “A Different Man” in heavy prosthetics and makeup before shedding (quite literally) his second skin. It’s only when Edward changes his face that he lands a role beyond office training videos about how to treat your disfigured coworkers – ironically, it’s a role based on him that he now requires a mask to play accurately.
Ingrid might have originally wanted an actor with neurofibromatosis, but she convinces herself that Edward is the more dramatically interesting pick – and it would be wrong to cast someone just because they have a disfigurement, right? When Oswald shows up (played by Pearson, an actor with neurofibromatosis, absent of all the prosthetics Stan needed to look the part), it still takes her quite a while to consider the fact that maybe Oswald should play the role. This is made funnier by the fact that Oswald is clearly a far better, more studied actor than Edward – “That salesman one,” Edward mumbles when asked what his favorite play is. Meanwhile, Oswald can pull any number of literary references or Brando and Stallone impersonations out at the drop of a hat.
“A Different Man” is riffing on the discourse that seems to constantly surround actors wearing fat suits or donning fake noses to play certain roles, taken to the extreme. But that theme is complicated by the fact that, despite his new face, the character in Ingrid’s play is Edward. With this tension in mind, the film becomes a striking exploration of social performance and exploitation. At the beginning of “A Different Man,” Edward evokes a certain pity from the viewer, one that emulates other movies of this sort – “The Elephant Man,” for example. He operates from a place of understandable fear, constantly hunched over and curled in on himself. When he runs into people, he often freezes, like he’s waiting for them to cringe or gasp in horror.
Of course, there are very painful times when that is the reaction Edward receives. Funnily enough, Ingrid – who paints herself and her relationship to Edward generously, to say the least, in her play – does gasp in shock when she first sees him. But there are also times where we see people reacting to Edward’s demeanor more so than his appearance. There’s a running gag where he keeps bumping into one of his neighbors. Edward always stops, almost giving the neighbor the chance to react poorly. But the neighbor seems to be more upset that Edward refuses to move out of the way, muttering, “Jesus Christ!” and pushing past him in exasperation every time.
Stan – so elastic and expressive with his face that it sometimes feels like a mask long after the prosthetics are gone – often evokes Edward’s original physicality even after his transformation. He’s still hapless, still awkward in his movements, and often frowning or scowling. Despite Stan’s obvious beauty, he can come across quite ugly at times, whether it be through his own making or the way the light hits him at any given moment, causing him to look withdrawn and sunken. Compare that to Oswald, who lights up every room he enters. His easy going demeanor is never questioned, and he’s welcomed with open arms by almost everyone he meets.
Cast in a play about his life, written by someone who hardly knew him, Edward becomes a willing participant in his own exploitation. He often pushes back on Ingrid’s characterization of him, but is rebuffed time and time again. While many of his criticisms are correct in theory, they would also change aspects of the play that, from what we know of Edward, are true. He did live his life passively. He did change his appearance because he didn’t think people would want to see him as he is. Only when his character is reflected back to him is he able to point out the real flaws in the design, the ones he couldn’t see before.
It’s hard to blame Edward for his choice to change his appearance, and easy to identify with his bewilderment over the fact that someone like Oswald exists. Here is a person who has not allowed society to mold the way he sees himself or the way he approaches the world, who refuses to see himself as ugly, or inhuman, or any of the other terrible things that are probably lobbed at him everyday. As much as Edward believes an outward transformation will be beneficial to him – and as much as we all wish we existed in The Bubble – beauty is only skin deep. Self loathing runs far deeper.
