Four A24s, Part 3: A Different Man

Today we have another BD-only (as opposed to 4k Ultra HD) release; but in this case, I'm a little less surprised they went that route.  A Different Man was one of A24's least successful films at the box office, not even recouping half of its modest $1.4 million budget back, which is a real shame.  If you haven't seen it yet, you might be looking at this movie wondering: is this just a Mask 2.0, another afterschool-spirited film made to tell us to be nicer to people with disabilities?  Like that inane one with Julia Louis Dreyfus and the giant parrot?  Thankfully, no.  This is a weird, thoughtful, subversive little movie, perhaps more in tune with the Jim Carrey Mask than the Eric Stoltz Mask.  Although actually, if you were to moleculary fuse the two together in a Brundle pod, you'd be getting closer.

Captain America's Sebastian Stan is surprisingly natural as a nebbish Woody Allen-type, a struggling actor with neurofibromatosis and a crush on his playwright neighbor (Renate Reinsve, The Worst Person in the World).  He agrees to participate in a futuristic medical experiment that transforms him, both physically and circumstantially, until a sort of doppleganger (Adam Pearson, Under the Skin, Drib) arrives to take everything away from him.  What results is a dark, cutting and mind-bending look at the humiliating interplay between art and artist.  Also, the soundtrack is terrific and the special make-up effects won the Academy Award.  I enjoyed writer/ director Aaron Schimberg's first film (Chained for Life) well enough, but this is a much more self-possessed and stimulating work.

2025 A24 BD.

A24 presents A Different Man in its proper OAR of 1.85:1.  This film was shot on 16mm (another reason they might've felt this title would be fine without a 4k), so there's a lot of film grain, which is handy because it makes it easy to judge the transfer.  And I have to say, wow, once again A24 has exceeded my expectations with how perfectly encoded this is.  This is as finely captured and preserved as you could hope for outside of a UHD; and even then, the distinction would probably be fairly mild. 

And they've gone all out in the audio department, too, giving this a 7.1 TrueHD mix with Dolby Atmos, plus an English descriptive track and optional English and Spanish subtitles.

And the extras are strong, too.  Schimberg and his two leading men give a breezy but still incisive audio commentary, backed up by a solid 20+ minute 'making of' featurette.  There are also four deleted scenes, a couple of which we'd heard about in the commentary track, and a fun fifteen minute high-speed document of the entire shoot in 8mm.  Again, no trailer.  I guess A24 doesn't believe in including them.  No biggie, but considering how dedicated to perfection they seem to be with their physical releases in all other releases, it's a bit curious.  We do get another six art cards, this time with pages of the screenplay printed on the back of each one.

A24 is one more consistent production companies in cinema history, especially considering all of the big chances they take with their films.  But still, usually I'm happy to just see them once and move on.  Maybe I'll revisit 'em on streaming a decade down the line when I realize I can barely remember them anymore.  And this is one I really wasn't expecting much of, but it turned out to be a real must-have release for me.  Who knew?