Sebastian Stan called out a journalist for using the word “beast” in relation to his character in Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man, in the press conference for the Berlinale Competition entry.
A Bulgarian journalist had asked Stan about his character’s “transformation from this so-called ‘beast’ to this perfect man”, a key narrative element of the film.
“I have to call you out on the choice of words there,” Stan responded calmly. “Part of why the film is important is we often don’t have the right vocabulary; it’s a bit more complex than that and there’s language barriers and so forth. But beast isn’t the word.”
“One of the things that the film is saying is we have these preconceived ideas; we’re not really educated on how to understand this experience particularly,” continue the actor to the journalist. “The things you’re saying about him at the beginning – that’s your interpretation. Everyone might have a different interpretation of what he’s going through, that might not be it, that might have been just for you.”
Stan was joined at the press conference by director Aaron Schimberg, and co-stars Renate Reinsve, and Adam Pearson, the UK actor who is also a campaigner and activist on disability rights.
“It would’ve been really easy to make this film really campaign-y or shouty and get on a soapbox,” said Pearson. “But audiences are more intelligent than others would sometimes give them credit for. A good film will change what an audience thinks for a day; a great film will change how an audience thinks for the rest of their lives. Aaron Schimberg is in the great film business.”
A Different Man debuted at Sundance last month, and won Schimberg the Director to Watch prize at Palm Springs film festival. It is produced by Gabriel Mayers, Vanessa McDonnell and Christine Vachon, for US brands A24, Grand Motel Films and Killer Films.
The story follows a man who undergoes facial reconstructive surgery; then becomes fixated on an actor in a stage production based on his former life.
Responding to a question about actors without disfigurements playing characters with disfigurements, Schimberg said, “I’ve always wondered about these issues, especially having a cleft pallet and not seeing other directors who have a disfigurement. In the past year I can think of two things I saw where a character has a cleft pallet and it’s just makeup.
“Just making the film, I feel like I’m coming from a personal place. If I’m engaging with those issues about the ethics of representation, I don’t want to get too heavily involved in that discourse; I just want to make a personal film.”
US filmmaker Schimberg also discussed the influence of on his work of Woody Allen, who is mentioned in A Different Man.
“People, especially people not from New York, would say to me ‘you remind me of Woody Allen’, which is just a way of saying ‘you’re an awkward person’,” quipped Schimberg. “It was a throwaway joke.”
A Different Man has its international premiere this evening (Friday 16) at the Berlinale.
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