A (Different) Man, a (Different) Plan, a Stunning Panorama-ma | A Different Man (2024) Movie Review | #OscarsHomework
The palindrome doesn’t work; the movie does 😤
I LiveSky film reviews over on BlueSky, and then piece them together with commentary to make my full reviews here on Medium before they go to Letterbox’d. Please subscribe anywhere/everywhere you can for more of my shenanigans…
A note on the trailer, and on trailers, generally
Okay, so I always include a trailer with these things, in case people haven’t even heard of the film or need refreshing or whatever. It’s just something I do.
But I was so eager to go back to the trailer this time, because I can’t even remember having seen it (pretty sure I must have; can’t recall), and only watched this movie because I was staring down the barrel of a lot of #OscarHomework, and people were saying some stuff about it that seemed… curious. Like, it seemed maybe polarizing or indescribable? So I pulled the trigger, and — wow — I’m so glad I did.
This trailer does a laughably bad job of marketing this movie. I don’t know how you could do any worse, but I don’t know how you’d do better, either. This film is unmarketable. It will find its audience just as it found me, on home release (primarily streaming).
There are some comparable films — not many, but some, and they kind of begin and end with Charlie Kaufman. So, like, Adaptation does a lot of the same zany, metatextual stuff that this movie does; how’d they market that one?
Much better. Still horrible, though! Still in no way captures, like, the crux of the thing, and how could you? This kind of metanarrative folding-in-on-itself humor (another comp: HBO’s Station Eleven, which may be for my money the most effective to do it yet onscreen) and self-reflexive self-reflection is not probably ever going to be a big, big hit. I think it’s inherently art made by and for artists (I mean, isn’t it all, but seriously, though), and to effectively market it, you’d have to lie to get it in front of eyeballs that won’t enjoy it.
Consider this hilarious attempt at synopsizing-without-ruining (they’re capable of doing neither; it’s a layered and complexly-bad film) Vanilla Sky:
Okay, so first, it’s three minutes long. Laughing out loud. That’s way too long, so it has failed prima facie.
Also, the first 90 seconds of the trailer cover not much more than that much of the actual film. If you’ve ever seen it, shit gets thrown at you breakneck (ha) until you’re overwhelmed and not processing it properly (and then, adherents argue, is when it does its real work; I just think it’s a bad movie that had the gumption to aim pretty high, given what it was capable of doing well), but the trailer of this makes it seem like an adult dramedy that’s mostly a love triangle between Cruise, Cruz and Diaz with some kind of crazy-ex, corporate-intrigue flavoring.
It’s in hilariously bad faith, completely misrepresents the film willfully, and then — funniest part, by far — the trailer literally throws it hands up and tells you in white text on a black background, “Forget everything you think you know about life, love, work, play, hate, death, reality, dreams, friends and sex, and just open your eyes, [you fucking dolts].”
They’re literally telling you to forget every thing you think you know about every thing and just fuckin… give it a chance, man.
That’s so pitiful, and it speaks to how hard it is to market movies ‘like these,’ by which I mean art-for-artists-by-artists, which usually overlaps a lot with writers-as-film-subjects, metatextual flourishes and play and a general mood of what I’d call ecclesiastism, a sort of existential ennui typified by every writer’s favorite book of the Bible (arguably the only good one): Ecclesiastes.
It kicks off with “‘Vanity, vanity, all is vanity,’ sayeth the teacher.”
If the guy at the front of the classroom opens the first lecture section with, “[deep sigh] what the fuck are you, or I, or any of us, even doing here? By the way, I’m really asking,” then you know that class is about to be an absolute banger.
Ask your average Christian, and the most poetic or most writerly of them may allude to Ecclesiastes, but your average, rank-and-file Jesus freak prefers a gospel or epistle. They might even prefer a proverb or psalm, the lot of which are traditionally ascribed to the same author canonically, King Solomon (this isn’t technically, precisely 100% true, but I am NOT going to get in a plot-based argument about bad fiction; life’s too short).
All your classic Biblical favorites have kind of the same tone, too. Ecclesiastes is different, though. Proverbs and Psalms are definitively written like God was in the room when the dude was at the quill.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and discipline… Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding.”
They sound like they were written by God’s golden retriever. Woof.
Ecclesiastes isn’t even as theatrical and look-at-me as Christ’s “Oh, father, abba, father, why hast thou forsaken me?” [classic nepo-baby move], and I think it’s a fair point for anyone present at the Crucifixion to be like, “…yeah, sure, this looks bad, but also, four weeks ago, you turned one substance into another magically in front of like seven hundred people, and then fed like four thousand more using what was left over from a meal for a couple of people. So… like, I’m sure your dad’s going to do something about it? Cheer up, Jesus. Your dad is God. It’s going to work out for you.”
There’s probably a lost gospel with words to that effect.
But Ecclesiastes hits different.
Ecclesiastes 1:11 “There is no remembrance of people of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.”
Even the most hopeful, nascent life that exists is hopeless and will soon be forgotten and won’t have mattered
Ecclesiastes 1:2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”
Pretty self-explanatory
Ecclesiastes 1:9 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
There is nothing new under the sun…
If you’re a writer (and for your sake, I hope you either are or aren’t, depending), you know that all anyone (and everyone) wants is something no one’s ever seen before that is also something familiar, comfortable and tried-and-true. A low-risk, singular, work of genius that will connect with a general audience.
It doesn’t exist.
It’s all vanity, all of it. All any writer can and does do is tell his or her or their story — or a story, but it’s really their story — in a way that hopefully feels fresh and different, a new voice, but also close enough to the lived experiences and realities of others to connect with them, also.
Movies like that — movies like A Different Man — rely on word of mouth and evangelism, because there isn’t any way you could cut any version of this trailer that would be both honest and faithful and convince enough people that they should go see this.
Films like these are irreducible, I think.
So before you read my review, see the movie.
I think it is trying some incredible things; I think it accomplishes some incredible things — it’s special. Five stars on Letterbox’d. It’s really something.
And some of you may not love it, but some of you might be the ones that especially love it.
I’m one of those, and I sense in this script and film a kindred spirit or vibe (what we looked at when we looked at literature in the course I took again and again in college, titled: Literature & Alienation). So, unreservedly, wholeheartedly, I endorse A Different Man as a work of substantive art and it’s also — for my money — hilarious, in a way that things rarely are or even dare to try to be.
And if you find it does connect, or you sense that similar, kindred spirit, I also recommend you dip your toe into Charlie Kaufman’s work, particularly the Nicolas Cage-starring, Spike Jonze film Adaptation and Synecdoche, New York (both written and directed by the Great Man, himself, and not for nothing — it’s on my top four on Letterbox’d).
Maybe you’re like me…
A Different Man (2024) | Movie Review | Oscars 2025
Knowing nothing was the perfect way for me to go into this film. Actually, even better — I set the film up for success, because I even bleeted about what a drag it always feels like to do Oscars Homework, and at the time, this just looked like the most-easily-streamable, tolerable of the lot. Plus it was on Max, one of the ones I have.
For the (blessedly) uninformed, that’s Time Warner Discovery or whatever they call themselves these days, helmed by famously-normal man David Zaslav, who has somehow discovered a stock-market cheat-code that allows him to make lots of money on paper by (and only by) performing actions that directly harm the product or the brand.
It’s like the mega-corporate equivalent of that scene in the boss’s office in Fight Club (an overrated film, if ever there were one, but I love Fincher’s oeuvre, and it’s not his fault assholes liked it for way the wrong reasons, and now it’s overexposed), wherein Ed Norton’s character assures his salary in perpetuity by beating himself senseless in his boss’s office, the ultimate incel power-fantasy.
Zaslav is like that, but instead of hitting himself, he’s hitting, like, Batgirl. And every time he lands a blow, the line goes up.
Suffice it to say, HBO has enough goodwill and positive results in the bank for me — and ditto A24 — that this felt like homework I was prepared to do.
Speaking of which, as awards-buzz goes, this movie doesn’t have much. The AMPAS nod is no more than that — a nod, Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
Stan was honored with a Golden Globe (Best Performance by a Male Actor — Musical or Comedy), plus he won the Silver Boar (ever heard of it?) at the festival A Different Man premiered at, the 74th Berlin International Film Festival (ever heard of it?), and that’s about it.
It’s too bad, but makes a lot of sense. Like I was wondering in the trailers section, how do or would you market this movie?
And yeah, you can’t; people have to do it for you.
So here we are.
Filmmaking is kind of magical, in a way. It’s alchemical. It’s an inherently-collaborative medium, often anchored by the vision of an auteur or singular person. But on even the most iron-fisted sets, it’s still dozens or hundreds of people working in tandem, towards one, singular goal.
As Dan Bronson said, “Any movie that gets made is a miracle.” And the second part is oft forgotten: “A good one is the Second Coming.”
Well, hallelujah.
A Different Man is written and directed by Aaron Schimberg, whom I’ve literally never heard of and whose Wikipedia page (as of press time) doesn’t feature a photo. I think I called him Adam Schimberg exclusively in my notes (on Insta). You’ve likely never heard of him, either.
Well, you’ve heard of him now.
I’m not alone in being excited by this Schimberg guy.
Variety is very proud of their annual list of 10 Young Directors to Watch (and with some reason, having spotted one of my all-time favs Mary Harron right away, along with Wes Anderson and Luca Guadagnino, Alfonso Cuarón, etc., all of which they tell you right up front, before you get to the interviews with the new directors to watch), and they highlighted Schimberg as he was working on this film. His interview is illuminating, and well worth reading.
Here’s the thing about this movie: every bit of it works for me.
Sometimes, when I’m writing, I have the feeling that I’m on to a story. Like, really on to something. And then sometimes, I think I can perceive that sense in the work of others, and that’s what I kept feeling here, a joyous sense of playful jealousy:
Goddamnit, this is SO good. I wish I’d written this.
It’s so accessible that if you don’t see yourself in the narrative, you aren’t trying. I had the distinct feeling I’d been all of these people before, at various points of my career and life.
But it felt (and still feels, a full twenty-four hours later and counting) like one of those stories that was practically bursting out of a writer. It’s that proverbial story this author — Schimberg — had to tell, the story he was born to tell, not unlike the meta story-within-a-story features Edward gaining (and losing) the role he was ‘born to play.’
I think there are natural comparisons to be drawn to the work of Charlie Kaufman, who examines identity and particularly the writer’s soul (and we writers love those writerly-soul-searches, don’t we?) in Adaptation and especially Synecdoche, New York.
What all of those disparate, different films have in common is that sort of world-weary, writerly, charming (I think) bitterness that I ascribe to the book of Ecclesiastes, the one all we writers love.
And unlike, say, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (that was, like, three movies ago; I’ve got to let this grudge go), this movie was paced flawlessly, and accelerated into its absurd, surreal climax so adeptly, they should study the script in film classes.
The performances are uniformly excellent. Stan plays a very-reserved, quiet character, Edward, and so has to do much of his work with just his eyes or just a look. For me, the jury was very much still out on his talents, because I’ve almost exclusively seen him in good or mid Marvel stuff (Captain Winter and the Bird Soldier was especially terrible, and kind of knocked me off the Marvel bandwagon entirely, if I’m honest… but inarguably not Stan’s fault).
Color me intrigued.
I’m a huge fan of Robert Pattinson, after watching his zany interviews (anyone who can answer those questions earnestly with a straight face for eight consecutive hours is a straight-up sociopath), performance in The Batman (at press time, the best DC film since The Dark Knight) and performance in The Lighthouse (one of my Letterbox’d Top 4 Films ever made). He seems cool and weird, and I like the cut of his jib. I exist in a perpetual state of excitement to see what he's up to next.
I might be starting to get that same sense about Stan. Some early, mid projects he’s ‘whatever’ in, then maybe a string of fascinating, bold choices that showcase what he can actually do.
It’s a viable career path, and I hope it’s where he’s headed. This is the most interesting, substantive work I’ve ever seen Stan do, and he was very much up to the task.
Adam Pearson, ‘steals the show’ (I try to avoid other reviews and commentary until I’ve finished mine, but I saw some things here and there, and I know this is a common refrain), but a lot of the humor is predicated on the writing (I won’t ruin the jokes, but the way the reveals of the quality and nature of Oswald’s life keep escalating is hysterical) and Stan’s reactions as Edward to those escalations.
It all works.
Renate Reinsve deserves especial acclaim and credit, because Ingrid is the emotional center of the film. Reinsve has to fluidly, gracefully, even thoughtlessly, shift between wit, charm, joy, haughty coldness, and everywhere she has to go, she’s always operating at full steam. It’s a committed, authentic and heart-wrenching performance that makes every joke funnier and every situation more comedic in the contrast. And she’s really funny, herself, too.
It all works.
I mentioned earlier that movies are magical, alchemical. This is the magic of film:
I’m not saying this is a perfect film. I’m saying it’s so good, I can’t tell that it's not perfect.
No movie or film is perfect. But through suspension of disbelief (earned, not given), quality of storytelling and strong writing and performances, some movies have the ability to dazzle us so thoroughly, they might as well be perfect. They are perfect to those of us that really connect with them, really love them.
This is one of those movies, for me.
I can’t wait to share it with other people, some of whom will NOT like it (all part of the fun), and I am quite certain it will be one that sticks around in the back of my head, informing the way I move throughout the world and the way I conceive of my relationships and obligations.
What more do you want from a film?
Watch A Different Man. It’s not homework. It’s home.
