Kayleigh Donaldson
In A Different Man, the black comedy thriller written and directed by Aaron Schimberg, a man with neurofibromatosis undergoes a major transformation. Protagonist Edward lives an isolated, limited life due to his condition. When experimental treatment shrinks his facial tumors and reveals the handsome visage of Sebastian Stan, he feels he has a chance to live the life he deserves. A director from his past is mounting a play inspired by him, so who could be more perfect a choice for the lead role? How about Oswald (Adam Pearson), a charming and debonair man who also has neurofibromatosis? Oswald is everything that Edward isn’t, before and after his transformation, and as played by Pearson (perhaps best known for a small role in Under the Skin), he forces through questions about whether appearance truly equals destiny.
Schimberg and Pearson’s brief but striking collaborations have drastically pushed forward the film industry’s oft-stilted conversations on ableism and how disability is typically depicted onscreen. A Different Man builds upon the ideas put forward by Schimberg’s striking and often bizarre feature debut, 2019’s Chained for Life. In trying to dismantle the entertainment world’s stereotypes about disabilities, are filmmakers forever cursed to potentially recreate that which they wish to subvert?
In Chained for Life, an egotistical European arthouse director of questionable talent is trying to make his English-language debut with a pretentious thriller about a mad scientist in a hospital full of “freaks.” The cast includes a number of actors with disabilities and facial differences, including Rosenthal, played by Pearson. He struggles to learn his lines while hoping for a simpler life (his ultimate dream: to be a waiter). Mabel Fairchild (Jess Weixler) is the film’s one major star, a proper actress who’s slumming it for some indie cred. Her character, a blind girl, is meant to fall in love with Rosenthal, and there is chemistry there, but the feelings they develop for one another aren’t so easily defined as love or hate.
The cheeky opening crawl features a famous quote from critic Pauline Kael about how audiences prefer their actors to be preternaturally beautiful: “Why should we be deprived of the pleasure of beauty?” With attractiveness comes range of roles and greater satisfaction for artist and audience alike, so goes Kael’s argument. It’s a conservative stance that Schimberg has no patience for, although his response isn’t so simple as to present an alternative. Sure, having a more diverse cast is just more interesting than an assembly line of samey hotties, but what you let them say and do still matters.
Everything about Chained for Life has you on the backfoot. Scenes of characters talking to one another seem like perfectly mundane conversations but turn out to be scenes from the film they’re making. The shifts between the film and the production become increasingly tough to decipher. Even the director is probably faking his Herzog-esque German accent for some sort of clout. His film is chock full of highly on-the-nose film references, such as Eyes Without a Face, A Patch of Blue, and Tod Browning’s Freak (as well as a hilarious reference to the Muppets.) By plundering the past of cinema’s depiction of disability, he ends up replicating its worst recesses.
A journalist asks Mabel if she worries the movie will be exploitative. It’s not hard to understand her concerns. Cinema has a paltry reputation when it comes to disability representation. It’s largely the denizen of able-bodied actors doing Oscar bait or inspiration porn, and actors with disabilities are seldom given roles of substance or even basic personalities. The film at the center of Chained for Life isn’t doing much to challenge any of these issues, even with the presence of a diverse cast. It’s Freaks if the controversial final act was the entire movie but with Hallmark card inspirations, a “love story” about a blind woman and the disfigured patient who walks out of the shadows like a horror villain. Any time an actor questions the director’s trite and ableist work, he offers a wishy-washy explanation of its artistic importance. Attitudes aren’t any better on set, as Mabel and her hairdresser wonder aloud if cast members are “really” disabled.
Schimberg is fascinated by what cinema counts as representation, and how it plays out as real-life consequences. Is Mabel playing a blind woman a step backward? Is a film full of disabled actors playing cliches and offensive spectacles any better? Rosenthal is funny, charming, and self-deprecating, but the character he’s playing is essentially the “beast” from a fairy-tale we’re meant to pity. When such artistic choices are made, who are they actually meant to benefit? Not the marginalized community they’re gawking at, that’s for sure.
That opening Kael quote says, “It is a supreme asset for actors and actresses to be beautiful; it gives them greater range and greater possibilities for expressiveness.” Certainly, Chained for Life debunks that limited notion, particularly through Pearson’s warm, moving, and often very funny performance. The film has fun mocking the ableism and vanity that the Kael philosophy, and the entire industry that props it up, demands, but it’s also not interested in presenting its cause as a noble one. That’d be a stereotype unto itself. There are many reasons art should be inclusive: not being boring as all hell is the one that makes Chained for Life so fascinating.
“Chained for Life” is streaming on Tubi, Kanopy, and Hoopla.
