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Of all the actors who have become famous for their involvement in the MCU, few have navigated their career outside of it as well as Sebastian Stan has. Finding himself unencumbered by a need to constantly “subvert” his onscreen persona or stuck being the main star of a movie nobody actually wants to see in theaters, he’s consistently sought out challenging roles that force the audience to question why they should even like him.
As shown by his playing roles like abusive husband Jeff Gilooly in I, Tonya, the cannibal stud Steve in Fresh, or his recent turn as Donald Trump in The Apprentice, Stan excels at exposing the duplicitous nature lurking beneath his conventionally attractive exterior. But no role that Stan has played so far can compare with what he’s doing in A Different Man, painting a tragic portrayal of someone deluded into thinking getting rid of his face could change who he truly was.
Sebastian Stan Embodies Self-Imposed Insecurity
Edward (Stan) is a wannabe actor born with severe facial deformities and has lived a life allowing himself to believe that he’s unwanted because of those deformities. He will shrink against walls to make way for other people, walk around with a permanent stoop despite having no back ailments, and is content to accept a demeaning acting role in a sensitivity training video because it’s the only work he can get.
Things change when he gets a miracle procedure that makes all of his deformities melt off of his face to reveal that, lucky for him, he looks like Sebastian Stan! Maybe now he’ll finally have the confidence to ask out his new next-door neighbor, the playwright Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), even though he must now act like he doesn’t know her since she got to know him before his procedure. Now rebranding himself as a successful realtor agent named “Guy,” he gets himself cast in a play that Ingrid’s written about the Edward that she got to know, only to be recast with Oswald (Adam Pearson), a man with a similar facial condition who’s everything Edward isn’t. This results in Edward being thrust into an existential quandary where nobody believes he’d have insight into his own life since nobody believes he’d understand living with a face like Oswald’s, and he finds himself less and less certain of what his identity truly is.
Stan may have become famous for playing a brainwashed assassin with a deeply codependent attachment style, but Bucky Barnes has never had anywhere near the level of existential confusion that Edward suffers. A perfect visual analogy for Edward’s self-image is when he gazes forlornly at an ice cream truck being unable to drive past an ambulance that’s busy loading an injured person onto it. It’s a seemingly random sight gag, yet it hints at the way that Edward’s perception of the world is warped toward the confirmation bias of his own inferiority.
Edward believes that he would be the life of the party wherever he goes, were it not for this “burden” holding him down, but has no regard for the reality of people around him. Edward’s identity was so consumed by his self-victimization that when he gets rid of the reason he was victimized, he doesn’t realize how little a tangible personality he has to hold onto. Stan is often considered an easily charismatic actor, yet the magic trick of his performance is how he hooks us with what we think is charismatic humility, only to reveal it as selfish pity that played upon the audience’s sympathy, which is made extremely apparent once Oswald enters the picture.
Adam Pearson’s Performance Highlights Stan’s Complexity
We’re never privy to Oswald’s backstory or the kind of life that he’s had, but Adam Pearson makes him a fresh breeze of charm and levity, with nary a hint of self-deprecation. Pearson has acted on-and-off in films since first appearing in Under the Skin, and he worked with A Different Man‘s writer-director Aaron Schimberg on his previous film, Chained For Life. With Oswald, Schimberg has personally gifted Pearson with the most dynamic role of his career, providing a funhouse mirror contrast to Edward, while still feeling like his own person.
If Edward is defined by a conviction that no one actually bothers to care about him, Oswald is defined by never doubting that anybody would enjoy being around him. Seeing Oswald be so confident in his own skin and able to command a room with ease makes you notice how Edward tries so hard to summon surface-level charm without truly letting anyone get under his skin. The early interactions between Edward and Oswald are quite humorous in how Edward is visibly gobsmacked by Oswald’s ability to be a tractor beam for everyone’s attention, so married to his own experiences that he can’t fathom someone in a similar position as him doing better in life.
In an extra twist of the knife, A Different Man subverts the conventions of identity theft cinema by making it clear that Oswald doesn’t actively covet Edward’s life, and remains mostly oblivious to the unintended damage he’s doing to Edward’s psyche. Oswald doesn’t even want to be an actor the way Edward does, so for Oswald to gain praise and accolades for essentially being a better Edward than the real Edward is a level of Dostoevskian karmic punishment for Edward that’s downright diabolical. It creates a one-sided tug-of-war between Edward and Oswald that’s made delectable by how Edward’s unstoppable desperation for validation bounces right off of Oswald’s immovably teflon tenacity, which only exacerbates the tailspin that Edward is already in. Given that Edward is the one putting so much energy into this unnecessary war, it’s only fitting that Oswald should get the proverbial last laugh, reminding Edward that he still hasn’t changed a day, a final humiliating blow to a life that already had enough humiliation in it.
Sebastian Stan Makes Monstrous Behavior Fascinating
Even if Sebastian Stan’s past characters were notable for their bad actions, they tended to be held together by a strong confidence in who they wanted to be, with little room for apologies or second-guessing. Despite their abusive behavior or conniving schemes, you feel like they look at themselves in the mirror and feel comfortable with who they’re looking at. Edward stands out for how his personality is built like a soggy sandcastle, constantly crumbling under the social pressure he willingly puts himself through. He’s so conditioned to be ashamed of himself that he throws himself into truly debasing behavior just for the sake of acceptance, like when he puts on a mask of his old face just so he can have sex with Ingrid, thereby being asked to roleplay his former life when he doesn’t want to, purely to satisfy her ego. Or when he’s so at wits’ end as to make people like him that he wears his face mask and puts on a bad British accent at his job because he’s convinced himself that being just like Oswald is the key to making people like him. If you haven’t seen the film yet (please go see it), you have no idea how low Edward will go to attempt to reassert whatever is left of his identity, spinning himself deeper into a web of his own creation.
That sense of self-inflicted and ever-mounting tragedy is at the heart of what makes Sebastian Stan’s performance so impactful: the knowledge that he never had to do any of it. Stan has sold himself repeatedly as a man of proactive intention, but Edward recedes before your very eyes at every turn, morphing from a meek turtle to a dangerous porcupine as he steadily de-evolves. In a similar vein to Joker, Stan’s performance becomes a study in the toxicity of learned helplessness and internalized shame, and what happens when those repressed feelings come to a boiling point. Unlike Joker, A Different Man knows exactly who Edward is precisely because Stan communicates how little Edward knows himself, and how badly he yearns for literally any semblance of self. The greatest trick Edward ever pulled on himself was convincing himself that he was a monster because of his face, when, in reality, he was a monster because of who he always was on the inside. It’s a testament to Stan’s skill that he made that monster deeply sympathetic, one who we see ourselves in a little too much.
A man undergoes reconstructive surgery to escape his troubled past and takes on a new identity. As he becomes involved in a stage production inspired by his own life, he confronts his former self and grapples with the blurred lines between reality and performance.
- Release Date
- October 3, 2024
- Director
- Aaron Schimberg
- Cast
- Sebastian Stan , Renate Reinsve , Adam Pearson , Miles G. Jackson , Patrick Wang , Neal Davidson
- Runtime
- 112 Minutes
- Main Genre
- Comedy
A Different Man can be watched in the US in theaters now.
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