In Daniel Keyes’s 1959 short story Flowers for Algernon, a lonely, late-30s factory janitor named Charlie undergoes an experimental surgery to raise his intellectually disabled IQ to that of a mastermind. When the laboratory’s test mouse, Algernon, rapidly deteriorates in health, the briefly high-capacity Charlie realizes he’ll decline as well. Only it’ll be worse, because he’ll be aware of what he’s missing.
Writer-director Aaron Schimberg tells a similarly tragic story with his latest endeavor, A Different Man. The film is a triumph: shocking, darkly comedic, insightful and utterly unforgettable. Schimberg has re-worked the Flowers for Algernon story arc to ask tough questions, holding a mirror to our conditioned belief systems.
Sebastian Stan stars as Edward Lemuel, an aspiring actor afflicted with neurofibromatosis — a genetic disorder that causes facial tumors and mutates a person’s appearance. (Note that this is a different condition than the far more serious, inconclusively diagnosed deformities suffered by John Merrick, aka the subject of The Elephant Man.)
A Different Man defies the limited categories for a film about the Algernon-like transformation of an outsider. At times it’s a staunch takedown of beauty standards. Elsewhere it’s a cautionary tale about never being happy with what you’ve got. The film works as a science-fiction story about pushing the boundaries of playing God, a harrowing thriller about the violence of unchecked ambition, and it even charms with moments of romantic whimsy.
Shot on 16mm film, the movie takes place in grungy New York City, where Edward resides in a Charlie Kaufman-esque dilapidated building that’s slowly falling down all around him. The dark mark on his ceiling grows into a fungal void, emitting the occasional rat, piece, or unidentifiable stuff. The disintegration serves to remind the viewer that the only constant is change, so don’t get too comfortable with what you think is going on. Writer/director Schimberg plays on expectations with gusto, and just a bit of maniacal fun.
When Edward’s new neighbor Ingrid (Renate Reinsve, a Norwegian-film breakout) moves in next door, the two begin hanging out regularly. Ingrid, a playwright, listens as Edward tells her about his acting dreams. She fawns over his ancient typewriter and his baby photos, remarking that he wasn’t born this way. Tension develops, as it’s unclear whether Ingrid is spending time with Edward because she genuinely enjoys his company, if she pities him, or if she’s gathering research for a possible play. Writer-director Schimberg pointedly lets these questions linger: Why do we find ourselves second-guessing Ingrid’s interest in someone with a facial disfigurement?
Suddenly, Edward is offered a radical medical procedure to drastically alter his appearance, and everything shifts again. Incredible prosthetic work by special effects artist Mike Marino is on full display as the experiment succeeds and Edward’s fragmented face falls off in clumps, revealing the handsome man beneath: Sebastian Stan’s actual face.
Here’s where it gets interesting. [Fair warning — spoiler ahead.] Instead of telling his doctor what happened, Edward, now looking like a completely different person, lies and says that “Edward” took his own life. Assuming a new macho identity, he moves out of his building, changes his name (ironically enough, to “Guy”), and becomes the face of a hot real estate company where he rakes in big bucks and talks a big game.
All is going swimmingly until Edward stumbles across Ingrid in the city and learns that she has written a play about his life. The frustrated actor buried deep within floats to the surface, Edward’s old life tethered to him like a prisoner. He knows this is the role he was quite literally born to play, and joins the production. All the while he leaves his old crush Ingrid in the dark that the man leading the cast of her first big show is the very same man who inspired her saga.
Sebastian Stan delivers a career-best performance as the man split in two. Who knew that the same guy who played the stoic, monosyllabic Winter Soldier had such versatility and range? Watching Stan fluctuate between the hunched over, timid wallflower who wears his affliction like Atlas’s punishment and the towering, broad-chested, slicked-back embodiment of achievement is enthralling.
Still, Adam Pearson, who doesn’t arrive until midway through the movie, manages to steal the show as Oswald, a man who unintentionally upends Edward/Guy’s entire new life. Pearson, who actually is stricken with neurofibromatosis in real life (and who played one of Scarlett Johansson’s potential victims in 2013’s Under the Skin), oozes the kind of confidence and swagger that would make Bogie bashful.
Oswald easily swoops in and steals the starring role in Ingrid’s play, sending Edward into a downward spiral. Unencumbered by his supposed shortcomings, Oswald doesn’t appear to be held back by his appearance in any single way. His composure exemplifies how happiness is a matter of perspective, while Edward stands just off to the side, frozen in a constant state of covet. It seems that it’s only when Edward finally gets what he wants that he realizes he has nothing.
The film’s Jekyll & Hyde-like observations of the duality of man are reflected in the city as much as in Edward. The passerby who used to gawk at Edward when he was still afflicted becomes a tad too welcoming once he presents a symmetrical, socially accessible face.
A Different Man’s storytelling zeal makes it a little too long, but that’s balanced out by knockout performances from Stan, Pearson and Reinsve, wickedly surreal production design by Anna Kathleen, a maddening score by Umberto Smerilli, and top-notch directing by Schimberg.
This wild, doppelganger deep dive into psychological layers of masks proves that obsessively fine-tuning one’s appearance can’t fix what’s broken inside your soul, and might possibly make it worse.
