"The Apprentice" and "A Different Man"

Let's talk about  the Sebastian Stan double feature today.

"The Apprentice" is a villain origin story for Donald Trump, taking place in the '70s and '80s, mostly in New York City.  It's largely unflattering toward Trump, but often more sympathetic than I was expecting.  The ambitious younger Trump at the beginning of the movie is shady but tempered by recent failures and the influence of his father Fred Trump Sr. (Martin Donovan).  It's when Donald Trump hires the notorious Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) to represent him in a discrimination suit, and comes into his circle of influence that he learns to really play dirty in his business dealings - blackmailing, bribing, and cheating his way to the top.  

Sebastian Stan is excellent in the movie, gradually transforming Trump from golden boy to unrepentant monster, adding his familiar physical and vocal  tics one by one.  He's charming in his scenes romancing a young Ivana (Maria Bakalova), and terrifying when the relationship turns sour.  Power and success corrupt him utterly, and it's to Stan's credit that this process is made to feel so tragic and feel like such a loss.  I don't think I've ever seen a more humanizing portrayal of Roy Cohn (with all my love to Al Pacino), whose later years are shown in counterpoint to Trump's rise.  He's introduced as this remorseless, venal, seemingly untouchable devil figure, and his downfall is well deserved.  However, it's also hard not to feel sorry for Cohn at the end of the film, who has to face the vile version of Trump that he helped to create.

For those of us who remember the era, "The Apprentice" also does an excellent job of capturing the feel of New York in the '70s and '80s, and reminding us of how Donald and Ivana Trump were viewed as aspirational figures and celebrities at the time.  Abbas resurrects and recreates a lot of '80s media, so we can compare the glossy coverage with the ugliness of the reality underneath.  For those viewers who are not familiar with the relevant events, please be warned that there is sexual violence in the film along with a lot of slurs being thrown around.  "The Apprentice" often feels like a crime or gangster picture, but with the crimes taking place on a scale that your traditional organized criminals couldn't imagine.  I was initially very reluctant about watching the film, but I'm glad that I did.  I can't say that I was very entertained, but I came away feeling much better informed, and appreciative of all the work that went into painting this disturbing portrait of Donald Trump.  

Now on to "A Different Man," a very personal, surreal black comedy about Edward Lemuel (Sebastian Stan), an actor who has extreme facial disfigurement due to suffering from neurofibromatosis.  Edward initially leads a very quiet, lonely life until a playwright named Ingrid (Renate Reinsve) becomes his neighbor.  When a new drug cures Edward and removes his deformities, he decides to become an entirely different person, Guy Moratz, and tells everyone that Edward died.  However, he can't forget about Ingrid.  She's created a new play, "Edward," about her brief relationship with his former self.  Guy tries to connect with her by winning the lead role and performing in a mask.  Ingrid, however, is dissatisfied.  And then another man with neurofibromatosis named Oswald (Adam Pearson) shows up in their lives, quickly becoming Guy's rival.                

Written and directed by Aaron Schimberg, "A Different Man" presents an insightful fable about identity and self-image, making great use of the talents of Adam Pearson, an actor it's impossible to take your eyes off of.  It's not often that you see a film so centered on a differently abled character that isn't the usual uplifting, feel-good film about them overcoming their disability.  "A Different Man" argues that Edward/Guy's deformity isn't what's holding him back in life, but rather his attitude.  And as the film goes on, it's his self-hatred and his unwillingness to share the truth with Ingrid that become his undoing.  Sebastian Stan is having a lot of fun playing a complicated character with all of these different layers and facets, whose deformity turns out to be as much internal as it is external.  And I love the decision to have the actor with the real deformity playing the happy, self-confident version of the main character.   

I admire the writing here more than the performances or the direction.  I like how acerbic the humor is, and the way that the relationships develop.  Edward's disfigurement is treated with minimal sentiment or schmaltz, and most of the people he interacts with either treat him normally or ignore him.  "A Different Man" is careful to portray Edward sensitively, and never makes light of his deformity, but at the same time it doesn't treat him with kid gloves either.  This makes him a far more compelling character than I was expecting at the outset.  The film won't be for everyone, existing in a very specific, very artsy New York milieu, but I was thoroughly impressed with what it accomplished.    

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