1 of 5 | Sebastian Stan stars in “A Different Man.” Photo courtesy of Sundance Institute
PARK CITY, Utah, Jan. 22 (UPI) — A Different Man, which premiered Sunday at the Sundance Film Festival, has good intentions and a lot of big ideas. Unfortunately, the film can’t juggle all of them and winds up frustrating instead.
Edward (Sebastian Stan) has a facial deformity that requires frequent surgeries to manage growths obstructing hearing and vision. Edward’s new neighbor, Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), comes over to get to know him but Edward fears she can’t get beyond his appearance.
When Edward’s doctor offers him the chance to participate in an experimental treatment, he jumps at the chance. The treatment causes his growths to literally peel from his face, leaving Stan’s natural face underneath.
Edward creates an entirely new identity for himself as Guy, a real estate agent. That’s the sort of premise that can be a logline for a movie. It certainly was similar to the festival description of the film.
Unfortunately, the film can’t seem to focus its plot about Guy’s journey and its statements about how society views people with different conditions. Writer/director Aaron Schimberg drops major plots as soon as he’s done with them, but the series of events doesn’t add up to much.
When Guy moves into a new apartment, he tells the doctors for the treatment that Edward died by suicide. This gets the medical team out of the movie at this point, but there should have been an organic way to integrate the medical story into the rest of the film.
But already at this point, A Different Man has had bizarre tonal shifts. The peeling of Edward’s face takes more than one scene and it is as graphic as a David Cronenberg movie.
That’s a sharp contrast to the tone thus far, which was heightened but not totally surreal. It was like our world but just a little off.
There’d been a bit of cringe comedy to that point, with random strangers waving to Edward. The police wake Edward up in the middle of the night knocking on the wrong door.
An ice cream truck tries to pass a parked ambulance but why is an ice cream truck out in the middle of the night? Just being illogical isn’t itself funny.
Plus, Edward acted in an HR video for businesses to teach their employees to treat colleagues with facial disfigurement sensitively. That video was comical for its misguidedness in “othering” the people with facial conditions in the guise of helping them.
But, it gets far more obscure. At first, Guy still struggles to adjust to his new face. He still wobbles like Edward, not used to having a face proportional to his body.
That would be interesting to explore but the film shifts focus again when Guy discovers that Ingrid has written a play about Edward. So he auditions for it.
A man acting in a play about his own life could be very derivative of Charlie Kaufman, but in that regard, Schimberg does have his own take.
Guy is performing Ingrid’s impression of him, never revealing that he used to be Edward. Guy also saved a mask of his Edward face which he wears for the play. The lab made masks of his original face at the beginning, and his potential new one as part of the treatment.
Ingrid seems to fetishize Edward. This leads to a bizarre love scene, but could still be a powerful story if it followed through. If Guy found out Ingrid actually liked Edward now that it’s too late, that would be a movie.
But, A Different Man shifts focus again when actor Oswald (Adam Pearson) visits the show because he heard about auditions for actors with facial disfigurements. Ingrid decides it would be better to have someone with an actual facial disfigurement play Edward.
Ironically, A Different Man itself put prosthetics on Stan to play Edward. However, the film gives Pearson a major role. That, plus a willingness to explore how the world sees people with facial disfigurement, are noble endeavors.
However, the only way the film addresses those issues is by allowing a lot of random characters to rant about how society views people. It is poignant that Oswald is so gregarious he wins everyone over, while Guy sees what Edward’s life might have been like had he had Oswald’s confidence.
But, there was nothing wrong with the way Edward was either. He has every right to be introverted, and he was still friendly to neighbors and strangers.
The story goes further and further off the rails with several more plot twists. Guy is confused about his new identity and his old feelings, but he just flails around trying to find things to do and ways to connect with people.
At one point Guy literally flails around at another character.
Movies with wildly different tones and themes can work, as evidenced by the films of Charlie Kaufman, Quentin Tarnatino, Daniels and others. A Different Man goes for it but falls apart long before it’s finished switching things up.
A24 will release A Different Man.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
Heat Advisory
from THU 12:00 PM EDT until THU 8:00 PM EDT, Eastern Montgomery County, Lower Bucks County, Philadelphia County, Delaware County, Eastern Chester County, Gloucester County, Northwestern Burlington County, Camden County, Mercer County, New Castle County
By and large, the zombie subgenre has bitten off more than it can chew in modern times. Between George Romero survival films and camp comedies, the well has become pretty infected. But once in a while, along comes a movie like This Is Not A Test.
Let’s sink our teeth into this new release and see how it stacks up against the classics.
The tone and tenor of this film represent the classic survival movies like Night Of The Living Dead. But the thing that grabs the audience about This Is Not A Test is the trauma of the characters. Holt shines as a withdrawn survivor of an abusive home, trying to cut through the wreckage to reunite with her sister. Each of the main characters have standout traits, and they bathe in strongly acted moments as the stress of the situation changes who they are.
The gore in This Is Not A Test is pretty strong. The attacks spring quickly and when they do, the special effects team does a good job showcasing the battle scars. The camera work is also frenetic in a good way, because the chaos of the chase scenes puts the viewers in a first-person perspective. This film lets you feel like a part of the survivors, so their journeys are interactive.
Longtime fans may say that there’s nothing new in This Is Not A Test, and maybe they’re right. There’s no fresh take on the monsters here, no crazy origin, nothing that we haven’t seen in the past fifty-eight years. But the pacing nails a great balance between getting to know the characters and getting the zombie splatter fest. The mental meltdowns of the characters feel well earned, and the arc of Sloane and her sister brings a lot of heart and investment to the story. Even the most jaded zombie horror fans will find something to appreciate here, even as a background movie.
Adam MacDonald has made another intense hit here, and This Is Not A Test is currently available to stream on Shudder.
Our score: 4.5 out of 5
EPIC. If I was asked to describe Christopher Nolan’s latest film, that is the word I would use. He has mounted a film that rivals the greatest achievements of filmmakers like Cecil B. DeMille or David Lean. And, like the films of those mentioned, it’s runs a tad too long.
I was shocked, but pleased, to see that my 12-year-old granddaughter recently did a school paper on King Agamemnon. Thank goodness they’re still teaching History in our schools. Based on Homer’s “The Odyssey,” the film tells the story of King Odysseus (Damon) and his adventures which, if you’ve read “The Odyssey,” include the Trojan Horse, the Cyclops and assorted angry Greek gods. The film covers each of these adventures in great detail, sparing nothing in the production design department. While Odysseus is away – and he’s gone for a l-o-n-g time, his wife Penelope (Hathaway) has to endure a never ending string of “suitors,” men lining up in the hopes of replacing the King should he not return. The men are nothing more then scavengers, taking advantage of the law of Zeus, which decrees no one should be turned away. This angers the Queen’s son, Telemachus (Holland), who must control his temper when the men try to bait him into a fight, the idea being if Telemachus is killed, the new husband would become the King. It’s all very interesting and complicated. And long.
Director Nolan is one of the rare filmmakers who, in my opinion, has never made a bad film. From “Memento” to the “Dark Knight” trilogy to the Oscar-winning “Oppenheimer,” he has proven himself a true master of cinema. “The Odyssey” only adds to that distinguished resume’
The cast is a tribute to Nolan himself who, like Woody Allen, can pretty much get anyone he wants for his films because, as an actor, why wouldn’t you want a credit in one of his films. Besides the three stars named above, the cast includes Robert Pattinson, John Leguizamo, Zendaya, James Remar, Jon Bernthal, Oscar nominees Samantha Morton and Elliot Page as well as Oscar winners Charlize Theron and Lupita Nyongo. As MGM used to advertise, “more stars than there are in heaven.”
The script and story are pretty faithful to the source material, though for some reason it bothered me whenever Telemacus referred to Odysseus as “dad.” Never father. The weird things you notice. Visual.y the film is stunning and the Trojan Horse and battle of Troy are worth the price of admission alone. I will add that I did see the film in 70 mm and, if that format is playing in your town, I urge you to see it in that format.
On a scale of zero to five, “The Odyssey” receives ★★★★ ½
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