If you're thinking that A Different Man has something profound and insightful to say about living with a physical deformity, you might be disappointed. Despite its subject matter, the movie fails to present any discernible point of view about the challenges and impacts of possessing conspicuous facial disfigurement. Schimberg could have used a few pointers from The Substance in how to stick an impactful and outrageous ending.
The story meanders clumsily through what is essentially a love triangle, pitting Edward/Guy (Stan) against Oswald (Pearson) for the affections of Ingrid. The true tragedy is that there is nothing compelling about Ingrid, a self-proclaimed playwright, nor her decision to produce a play about her presumed-deceased neighbour Edward, whose affection she spurned due to his disfigurement. Even more bizarre is her sudden change of heart about the disfigurement and attraction for Oswald, which precipitates Edward's, now Guy, descend into stalker territory.
There is insufficient exposition of Edward's new life as Guy post-treatment, his astronomical rise as poster child of a real estate company, and his continued infatuation with Ingrid, regardless of other women he has met and dated as Guy. The appearance of Oswald and his sudden omnipresence are similarly abrupt. He inserts himself into every scene with an uncharacteristic ease and preternatural charm. In real life, Schimberg explained that he was taken aback by Pearson's charisma, which Pearson explained as a compensatory mechanism to disarm people with friendliness before they can judge his appearance.
I think Schimberg was well-intentioned, but Oswald became a caricature of Pearson; the scene where Oswald was doing yoga in a park dressed in traditional Indian garment was an especially egregious example. A Different Man would have been more effective as the battle between the vulnerable true self represented by Edward, who is painfully self-conscious and a hermit by necessity, and the grandiose false self of Oswald, who traipses through life as if his disfigurement is not at all a hindrance. And the movie would have had Edward/Guy vanquishing the grandiose Oswald to attain holistic integration between his old and new self. That movie would have been 8/10.
