| A24 | Release Date: September 20, 2024 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
36
Mixed:
8
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
NMEOct 14, 2024
Different by name and different by nature, A Different Man is one of the most original films of the year. Not since the days of Charlie Kaufman, with his brilliant scripts for meta-movies Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Synecdoche, New York, has there been anything this bonkers.
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A Different Man prioritizes laughs over proselytizing. There is inherent humor in the absurdity of the situation—which takes a momentary detour near sci-fi territory during Edward’s transformation—but Schimberg wrings laughs out of deftly staged awkwardness (though, thankfully, not cringe).
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The Film StageJan 26, 2024
A Different Man is a loaded story––filled with plenty of passed detours and dark alleys––and it can start to feel a bit punishing by the end, where Schimberg struggles finding a natural resolution. But maybe that’s the point. This movie feels itchy because these are messy, undefined, unresolved topics.
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IndieWireJan 22, 2024
By refracting Brian De Palma’s self-reflexiveness and the Coen brothers’ mordant fatalism through the prism of his most personal obsessions, Schimberg creates a house of mirrors so brilliant and complex that it becomes impossible to match any of his characters to their own reflections, and absolutely useless to reduce the movie around them to the stuff of moral instruction.
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SlashfilmSep 24, 2024
The Kafkaesque reversal-of-fortune humor that follows — centered on how outgoing, beloved Oswald’s mere presence pours salt on Guy/Edward’s identity crisis — is as shrewdly conceived a comic bad dream as we’ve gotten since the heyday of “Zelig”-era Woody Allen or Charlie Kaufman (whose film “Synecdoche, New York” this feels like a cousin to).
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A Different Man is a major work—even as it shapeshifts from Cronenberg to Kaurismäki, developing into new territory at every turn, Schimberg never loses sight of his central questions: What makes us who we are? What does it mean to be a good person in this weird but beautiful world, surrounded by other people?
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Although A Different Man slightly runs out of steam in its second half, it’s an effectively atmospheric and idiosyncratic thriller, deftly examining the patronising attitudes that prevail regarding difference and disability, and the knotty topics of authorship and entitlement to other peoples’ stories.
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With A Different Man, Schimberg attempts — and mostly succeeds, with deliciously awkward results — to cram a lifetime of thoughts about beauty and ugliness, attraction and disgust, identity and performance into a postmodern meta-film mold that few (apart from Charlie Kaufman, perhaps) have managed to make tolerable.
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The Observer (UK)Oct 10, 2024
There are a lot of ideas churning around in this intriguing but scattershot picture, which veers into the surreal and macabre in its quest to explore themes of identity, authenticity and the nature of beauty. Not all of it lands successfully, particularly in the increasingly agitated and fragmented second half.
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Is Schimberg most interested in Cronenbergian horror? Psychological thrills? Darkly comic surreality? He’s gotten so much right that one more pass at the script could have pushed him to where he wants to be. But without a rock-solid core, A Different Man eventually succumbs to an insurmountable crisis of identity.
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