A Different Man

One spoiler below. Read it anyway.

In A Different Man (2024), Sebastian Stan’s Edward, an aspiring actor who has neurofibromatosis resulting in a facial difference, undergoes experimental treatment and has his face radically transformed into a “normal” one. Before this shift in appearance, we are seen how the public reacts to Edward: people who can observe a connection to him, like another aspiring actor or the manager of his apartment complex, have natural conversations with him, but strangers’ interactions with him are reactions that oscillate between staring (making him a spectacle and not an equal) and rudely assuming he’s someone else (fabricating a connection).

After the transformation, Edward assumes a new identity as Guy Moretz, a successful real estate agent whose life has improved before his very blue eyes. His ventures through New York City have changed: instead of people staring at Edward on the subway because of his facial difference, Guy gets stares because of his seemingly appealing face. Instead of people thinking they recognize Edward from some random place, Guy is recognized as an attractive professional with ads on the subway, or just an attractive person. His inner life then drops into turmoil at a catastrophic speed as he meets Oswald, another man with neurofibromatosis, played by Adam Pearson, an actor with the condition. Oswald radiates confidence and magnetizes adoration. Guy observes Oswald’s life with a blip of awe, then immense jealousy as Oswald begins to take over a role in a play based on Edward, written by his former apartment neighbor Ingrid.

As an audience, we are rarely told in Edward’s words why he feels what he feels. The acting and camerawork does a lot of that instead. For instance: the scene directly after an interaction with his neighbor Ingrid, Edward stands in a small room talking about an incredibly attractive woman and the disconnect between she and him; we might be led to believe that he is speaking to a friend, but instead, he is performing a monologue before casting agents, who appear bored and uninspired. The same goes for Guy. We know by watching the scenes unravel that he is attached to a role Ingrid wrote based off of Edward, and he solidifies that by his justification of why he needs to play it, saying to the cast and crew “this is me” while behind a mask of his former face, courtesy of his doctors. But talking about the character is the only way he talks about himself. Throughout the film, the camera pans to Edward and Guy in jarring strokes that convey the emotion of the scene. We can recognize the bewilderment on Guy’s face as he navigates a world anew.

This is also due in part to the fact that the movie, written and directed by Aaron Schimberg, a man with a facial difference, operates on the understanding that having a facial difference is difficult in a world that caters to people without facial differences. His physician, whom we are introduced to by a slow pan up his body from his shoes, introduces the idea of an experimental drug that will change his face with a level, calm tone. The doctor behind this experiment seems zany, as a doctor of such an experimental operation might be. Still, both of these doctors have the confidence attached to an idea that wanting to be rid of a facial difference is the goal of anyone with a facial difference. Almost every movement of the characters has meaning that is easily identifiable: a man with a facial difference stopping a woman without one from touching his face by holding her hand, both of them pausing in the moment, the woman abruptly leaving.

There is no suspension of disbelief when we enter this film, as we the audience do live in a world that shuns people with facial differences. There are so many lines and moments in the film that I recognize as someone with a facial difference. When Oswald says he was inspired to read The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison because Guy has strikingly blue eyes, and Ingrid says she never noticed, even though she’s sleeping with Guy, I was reminded how people with facial differences are remarkable in their appearances while people without facial differences can have the ability to blend in, to walk into a subway car or a bar or a restaurant and not have attention focused on them just because they’re there. Or when Edward was approached by people who thought they knew him - “do you work for Facebook?” “no, but I get that all the time” - I was reminded of how strangers will break conventions of politeness and talk to me about my face, even walking up to me to talk to me about my face and saying how proud they are of me, despite not knowing me at all.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Schimberg was referring to situations he has been in that are similar to mine, just as I wouldn’t be surprised if he was drawing from something completely different but in the shared experience of having a facial difference. The movie is an exercise in understanding what you understand about the experience of being othered by a different appearance. I am sure that people without facial differences who have been othered for looking different can find personal connections to this. People who don’t think they’ve been othered but are empathetic and have knowledge outside their personal experiences can understand parts of it, too.

And certainly, people with none of the above can understand parts because it is set in the real world, a world where doctors assume people want “normal” faces and not for society to change. As I do with most movies I see now, I went onto Reddit after watching it. Some people were mystified by parts of the film - why did he do that? they asked about when Guy stabs a physiotherapist who is completely baffled as to how a man with a facial difference impregnated a woman without one. Seeing such questions made me upset: watching a film that effortlessly brought us through scenes without internal narration, why can we understand Edward’s wailing after seeing “normal” people in public but we can’t understand why Guy chose violence against an ignorant person and worldview?

I do feel a burning rage when I read people being obtuse about something like that. Media written by people without facial differences specifically about people with facial differences often makes the weirdest, most simplistic yet offensive takes, and the reactions on Reddit or Goodreads etc often praises the uninformed worldview of the author. In these instances, I am so incredibly upset by the author’s words as well as the praises. After reading the misunderstanding questions on Reddit, my upset surprisingly quelled pretty quickly, and I realize it’s because A Different Man, a film written and directed by a man with a facial difference and starring a man with a facial difference, is true to a myriad of experiences of people with facial differences. It is accurate. Even when Edward peels off his face to reveal a new one and assumes an identity as Guy and becomes a real estate agent with no explanation of what legal and social and medical hurdles he faced in slipping into this new identity, it is accurate.