A Different Man, a New York-set fable-cum-psycho-thriller from writer-director Aaron Schimberg, is the type of relentlessly bleak movie that conflates suffering with depth. Almost all of that suffering is borne by Edward (Sebastian Stan), a loner in a damp New York apartment building isolated by a genetic physical disfigurement (Stan wears prosthetics) who wants to be an actor. Life is a parade of indignities for Edward: people either stare too long or avert their eyes from his face. His ceiling leaks. The only acting gig he can find is in a PSA for offices on how to overcome disgust to treat co-workers with physical disfigurements like humans – “ask how they’re doing occasionally like you would anyone else”. His new neighbor Ingrid (The Worst Person in the World’s Renate Reinsve) literally gasps upon seeing him for the first time.
It’s grim, though visually distinct and intriguing, at least initially. A Different Man seems to have something to say on disgust, one of the primal building blocks of human emotions, how it creeps and jolts and manifests. How we respond to, say, creeping mold on the ceiling, a drowned rat in brown water, a roach in coffee, a sliced finger oozing blood, gangrenous skin. Edward knows disgust well – he’s provoked it in people by just existing and internalized it into stuttering, near-wordless shame. His loneliness is so acute that he attaches deeply to the deeply self-involved Ingrid, an aspiring playwright who takes an interest in him out of boredom, vanity, ambition and curiosity.
