Who can define who I am if I don't even know it?

Imposter syndrome: psychological phenomenon that causes people to doubt their accomplishments and fear being exposed as a fraud persistently.

I have had it for a while now. I don't know specifically the time, day, month nor year I it started, but I know I have it and it doesn't want to go away. Since 2012, I've put my mind to becoming a film director. Why? Back then, I simply felt that everything happening behind the scenes had an inexplicable magic I was unable to detach myself from. In addition, I have always considered myself kind of talented to create stories—it's something that has been natural for me since, according to my parent's anecdotes, I was a kid that got "lost" at the beach and invented stories when adults asked me where my parents were.

In these twelve years, I have gone through different phases: I started a self-taught process regarding this matter. I watched many movies trying to find how the things I saw on the big screen were made. I spent thousands of hours watching YouTube videos about cinema and direction. I started the Audiovisuals Art career and even recorded a short film with a friend, which we also published on YouTube seven years ago. But now that I have the time, I can't write. I have ideas, but I can't write.

When asked who I am and what I do for a living, I always try to answer in the same way, but there's a detail that never slips my mind: I always say I'm "almost a filmmaker." James Cameron would tell me something like: "Let's go kid, grab a camera, shoot something, put a title to it. Ready. You're a filmmaker." On the one hand, the unshakeable faith that someday I will achieve—at least partly—this dream feels like that push I need, something I repeat to myself as a mantra. On the other hand, it also makes me feel like a fraud. Many times, when I look in the mirror in the morning, I think: "Who am I trying to fool? I haven't done anything with my life." I have made thousands of excuses and, in several holes filled with nothing, I wasn't able to satisfy the wish to turn many of the recorded stories in my head into words comprising a script. Who stops me from being who I really want to be? The answer is obvious, but it terrifies me.

The first thought I had—practically without taking the necessary time to analyze what I was actually watching—five minutes after starting Aaron Schimberg's third movie as a director, A Different Man, was: "How did the director convince actor Adam Pearson to play this role without touching on the sensitive spot in him created collective prejudices?" Sure, when Sebastian Stan—who plays our protagonist with an unforgettable and arrogant performance—looked at the camera, smiled and, then, the closing credits started rolling, everything clicked. But before moving on, there are two questions I must answer you: who is Adam Pearson and why should his human condition be addressed?

Pearson is a British actor with only three movies in his filmography. Firstly, he had a small part in Jonathan Glazers' unsettling Under The Skin. Secondly, he appeared on Schimberg's second movie, Chained For Life. Now, he works once again with the New Yorker director to play a mysterious man who replaces another one in a theatre play based on the life of the man he's replacing, who underwent a medical procedure to transform his face into a newer and more attractive version of it. It sounds really twisted, but that's how it is. Even though the peculiarity of this work fills the screen from the very first moment, it also makes our flesh crawl due to its undeniable realism. Who am I? Who do I want to be? What do I say to others about me?

A Different Man doesn't offer satisfactory answers nor magical solutions. If it did, it would be a forgettable sensationalist movie, even though it may sound kind of contradictory. The fact is that cinema, as every art form, must present the complete opposite: the proposal of a question that can solely and exclusively be answered by us and not by what we have in front of our eyes. Do I want to answer it now or do I want to go down a path that invites me to answer it? This thriller with hints of satire/parody may be my artistic placebo for this continuous "blockage" that distresses me, or it may be the push I need. I don't know. It's too soon to say what role this movie will have in my life.

The story's flow is organic. The way of narrating is splendid. You're probably not going to feel you're in the presence of "this year's cinematic experience" since a drama with these characteristics doesn't fit in with this label's standards, but what do we actually call an experience? To some, maybe the best representation would be an epic film. To others, a film based on true events. But the experience is related to the journey, which is simultaneously related to the feelings involved in it. This deconstruction process as a viewer is related to what this film made me feel.

Edward Lemuel (Stan) is an aspiring actor who apparently doesn't get casted in many roles due to a weird cutaneous condition on his face called neurofibromatosis—if you remember David Lynch's The Elephant Man, you may get an idea of how much he suffers. He experiences other's inevitable and excessive looks, but he shows himself as appeased and slightly affected. On top of that, he's in front of a pretty complex situation: he has the opportunity to have a "normal" face again. And Edward, as every human being who can't deal with what he has, is about to accept an unrefusable offer. "All unhappiness in life comes from not accepting what is," a neighbor tells him. If only we could absorb a stranger's words in another way without thinking they are absolutely useless.

As if he were a character from The Substance's micro universe, Edward willingly submits to an—almost—experimental procedure and transforms into Sebastian Stan, or into the Sebastian Stan version he would like to be, with an ease that surprises both the changed man and the audience. From that breaking point, this drama directs its comical tone towards a mysterious and absurd one which could easily belong to, I don't know, Yorgos Lanthimos, just to mention the most renowned current example. Nonetheless, it can also be symbolically read as an analogy of how narratives can make our stomachs turn, surprise us in the least expected ways and, why not, simultaneously shock us.

Posted on DECEMBER 12, 2024, 16:52 PM | UTC-GMT -3

If you liked this article remember to give it a 👉 LIKE, put it in your FAVORITES, COMMENT 🗣️ , and FOLLOW ME for more movie and series content 📽