Title: Chained for Life Year: 2018 Genre: Drama Country: USA Language: English Director/Screenwriter: Aaron Schimberg Music: C. Spencer Yeh Cinematography: Adam J. Minnick Editor: Sofi Marshall Cast: Jess Weixler Adam Pearson Stephen Plunkett Sari Lennick Charlie Korsmo Sammy Mena Alison Midstokke Gina Murdock Miranda Gruss Rebecca Gruss William Huntley Lucy Kaminsky Keith Poulson Will Blomker Rating: 6.9/10

Title: A Different Man Year: 2024 Genre: Drama, Comedy, Thriller Country: USA Language: English Director/Screenwriter: Aaron Schimberg Music: Umberto Smerilli Cinematography: Wyatt Garfield Editor: Taylor Levy Cast: Sebastian Stan Renate Reinsve Adam Pearson Malachi Weir John Keating Liana Runcie Doug Baron Owen Kline Lucy Kaminsky Karoline Eleanore Pienta Michael Shannon Miles G. Jackson Rating: 6.8/10 Two films from American filmmaker Aaron Schimberg, whose is born with a cleft palate which explains his fixation with facial disfigurement, a theme running through his second and third features CHAINED FOR LIFE and A DIFFERENT MAN, both starring British actor Adam Pearson, who is diagnosed with neurofibromatosis and whose “elephant man” deformity first graces the screen and leaves an indelible impression in Jonathan Glazer’s UNDER THE SKIN (2013). CHAINED FOR LIFE is a meta enterprise about filmmaking. An European auteur (Korsmo, mimicking the unmistakable German accent of Werner Herzog) makes his English-language debut and Schimberg orchestrates and calibrates the blocking and mise en scène among a frenzy of hustle and bustle that pays homage to Truffaut’s DAY FOR NIGHT (1973). The film’s leading actress Mabel (Weixler) struggles to click with her malformed costar Rosenthal (Pearson), who are among a band of disabled actors hired for the film (a beared lady, a dwarf, a giant, a pair of Siamese twins, a hermaphrodite, several burnt victims, among others, which mirrors Tod Browning’s iconic silent film FREAKS, 1932). Straining to build a deeper and undiluted connection with the convivial Rosenthal, Mabel is disconcerted by the film crew’s hypocrisy (which she also feels complicit), their exploitation of and prejudice against Rosenthal and co. (who are separately quartered in a hospital, which also doubles as the film set, while the main crew stays in a hotel nearby). Guarded politesse, faux-familiarity, insincere joviality, avoidant glances, all try to hide the discomfiture in face of appalling abnormality. Mabel also imagines what will happen if her pretty face is disfigured or Rosenthal’s anomaly is cured, all lead to brave herself for the intimate scenes with him added in the script. The stigma is hard to eradicate but Schimberg erects his camera steadfastly to regard Pearson’s gummy, tumid, enlarged visage, to acclimate our eyes to its strangeness, to reveal the sensitive, vulnerable interior that we can perceptually relate to. CHAINED FOR LIFE is a scattershot attempt to break the mold (challenging the opening quote of Pauline Kael) and often feels lost in its own weird confections. It may not follow much logical sense or adhere to a thrilling narrative stratagem, but Schimberg and his team (especially the two leads) leaven the story with abundant compassion and conviction to offer adequate food for thought, not least its wry ending where Mabel is stumped by the question from a disembodied voice“can I have your permission to film you?”A leading question circles back to how to fix one’s gaze on the otherness and question one’s own normalcy. A DIFFERENT MAN continues Schimberg’s affirmation and demystification of disfigurement (here the tricky question of eroticizing is boldly broached). Edward Lemuel (Stan, hiding behind a meticulously wrought mask, but through his glinting eyes, one can detect the perceptible incongruousness between his own face and the aberrant form of his exterior) is another Rosenthal, an actor afflicted by neurofibromatosis. One day, his new neighbor materializes in the person of a statuesque, forthcoming Ingrid (Reinsve), a budding playwright, to whom he takes a shine. After a miraculous medical breakthrough, Edward acquires a normal physiognomy (a metamorphosis verges on body horror, evolving through writhing murkiness and convincing prosthetics), yet, instead of sharing this groundbreaking achievement, for no apparent reason, he adopts a new identity Guy Moratz and announces that Edward is dead, a plot contrivance is brushed off too easily. A few years after, Guy becomes a high-flying realtor, and Ingrid debuts her off-Broadway play named “Edward”, about the life of her allegedly dead friend. Guy successfully auditions for the title role, and starts a carnal relationship with Ingrid. However, his place in the sun is threatened by the advent of Oswald (Pearson), a true neurofibromatosis patient whose gregarious charisma and proteanism, eventually wins over Ingrid and usurps the protagonist in the play, leaving an embittered Edward/Guy on the sideline. The irony of the real Edward is deemed unfit to play himself is Schimberg’s fervent testament to defy the taboo of disfigurement, and tritely through the preserve attraction of a gorgeous member of the opposite sex, which is in furtherance from Mabel’s ambiguous fascination toward Rosenthal. But a whiff of unease derived from Ingrid’s fetishization of the disease’s anomaly fails to be expunged. Her and Oswald’s final decision to join a commune in Canada feels like a practical joke which boomerangs, implying that they are still marginalized and can only find peace in a niche of mockery than in the broad daylight whereas a “normal-looking” Edward, after serving significant time behind bars for one explosion of his suppressed murderous rage, is none the better. Despite of the physical transmogrification, Guy and Edward remain the same identity, struggling to get what he really wants. Stan, receiving a Best Leading Actor trophy in Berlin, milks the role’s duality with a sustained mental disturbance that enriches Edward’s interiority and holds the rein of his teetering mental disintegration. Edward is not a psycho, even in the most stressful and disillusioned circumstances, his inherent goodness can still prevail over his irrationality, thankfully, the well-primed confrontation between him and Pearson never comes to a sorry end. Their menage-a`-trois situation has a drollness which ultimately reflects Schimberg’s sense of humor (that Michael Shannon cameo is a wry snapshot of groaning inwardly). Pearson, flexing his muscles with a slightly different persona from CHAINED FOR LOVE, is astonishingly self-confident and triumphantly sloughs off any vestige of self-consciousness. As for Reinsve, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Weixler, is the Continental foil whose peculiar propensity never empathetically spell out. When all is said and done, A DIFFERENT MAN clearly manifests Schimberg’s noblesse oblige, but can audience really buy its bulldozed rectification? A pinch of salt is hard to dispense with. referential entries: Jonathan Glazer’s UNDER THE SKIN (2013, 8.2/10); Tod Browning’s FREAKS (1932, 7.6/10); Fran?ois Truffaut’s DAY FOR NIGHT (1973, 8.2/10).