Stan behind the mask
In a pair of fascinating portraits, the Marvel star shows what he’s capable of.
In an uncanny twist, though Sebastian Stan is shrouded in varying degrees of prosthetics in two incredible movies this month, I’ve never ‘seen’ him as clearly as I do now.
Unlike many of my fellow critical colleagues, I’m not averse to the fun that Marvel movies can sometimes bring, whilst also acknowledging the damage that once all-consuming machine has wrought on the industry at large. But despite rating The Winter Soldier amongst the franchise juggernaut’s finest offerings, that was more about its political thriller leanings, with just a dash of Le Carré, than it was Stan’s turn as a good guy gone rogue, then brought in from the cold.
Of course, Stan’s popped up in other intriguing spots. As an FBI agent opposite an unrecognisable Nicole Kidman in Karyn Kusama’s grizzled neo-noir Destroyer, as the ex-husband of Margot Robbie’s disgraced figure skater in Craig Gillespie’s I, Tonya, and a kidnapping cannibal in Mimi Cave’s Fresh. But he’s rarely been the focus pull.
That changes with The Apprentice, Iranian director Ali Abbasi’s (Border, Holy Spider) villain origin story of the disastrous 45th President of the US, and American filmmaker Aaron Schimberg’s exhilaratingly knotty A Different Man.
The scorpion and the frog
In The Apprentice, the biopic Presidential nominee Donald Trump does not want you to see and alleges is entirely fabricated, Stan dons Brandi Boulet’s makeup and minimal prosthetics – after instigating a ramen-heavy diet – to step into his monstrous shoes.
It’s exactly the sort of depiction that’s anathema to Trump’s carefully crafted mythology as a self-made man in command of The Art of the Deal, the mantra and the memoir we’ll get a glimpse of being ghostwritten. Instead, he’s a lapdog for his odious, purse-string-clutching dad, Fred (Martin Donovan), forced to collect overdue rent in person and at great personal risk from some rather tetchy tenants.
Suffocated by daddy issues and repulsed by the aimlessness of his younger brother and troubled pilot Freddie (Charlie Carrick), he spies a way forward through the court of infamous New York City lawyer Roy Cohn. If, at first, it seems Succession star Jeremy Strong is the real star of the show in another sideline spin for Stan, then a trap is being sprung.
Roy Cohn was not a good man. A lawyer and ringleader during Joseph McCarthy’s ‘Commie’ witch hunt, the political fixer for Nixon and Reagan was ultimately disbarred for a fraction of his corrupt practices. He’ll be familiar to theatre lovers as the haunted figure in Tony Kushner’s seminal HIV/AIDS epic Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, with Ron Leibman originating the role on Broadway and Al Pacino in the TV miniseries.
In Strong’s hands, Cohn’s miserably mean mongrel luxuriates in long vodka bottle-draining lunches with mafia brutes. A monster with far more capable killer instincts than Kendall Roy’s, he twangs his dirty secret-ensnaring spider’s web from the corner of smoky private club rooms and his mansion where queer orgies abound, mercilessly twisting politicians, cops and unions alike to his whims and those of his top-dollar clients.
As drawn by screenwriter and The Loudest Voice in the Room author Gabriel Sherman, Trump is desperate to carve a legacy of his own by leveraging Cohn’s connections to muscle in on the tired heart of the city, all so he can build his ivory tower American Dream of becoming a hotelier, tax law be damned.
Stan’s magnificently meagre as a somewhat mumbling acolyte staring covetously at Cohn’s largesse while brownnosing his way into his world, worshipping a father figure who sets down the three commandments from on high that Trump will one day claim as his own: Always go on the attack. When challenged, admit nothing and deny everything. Claim victory at all costs, even in defeat
It’s a playbook we know all too well, with the one-time minion mimicking his master and then eating him alive. That’s the majesty of Abbasi’s Machiavellian drama, as we watch a green Trump grow ogre-like on his crass golden throne, casting aside the prizes he collects. They include an excellent Maria Bakalova (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm) as first wife, Ivana. A brutal scene of sexual assault is the most flinch-inducing within The Apprentice, even if Bakalova’s role is otherwise underwritten for such an accomplished actor.
As we witness this twisted tango, with Kasper Tuxen’s cinematography guiding us from the grainy ’70s to the garish ’80s, Stan’s flinty-eyed and ferocious performance captivates. As Trump sucks Cohn’s lifeblood and then mocks his fading form before turning his back, we feel a familiar flinch. That ache in the moral muscle Kushner pinched in Angels in America.
Strong’s Cohn may be a despicable man, alone and afraid at the end of his life, haunted by those he gleefully crucified and eaten alive by AIDS-related complications while denying, to the bitter end, that he was HIV-positive. But in turning to our ‘better angels’, we are capable of sympathy for the devil, while Stan is diabolical as the beast Trump becomes. It remains to be seen if this scorpion will one day drown.
Who’s playing who?
Stan also excels in another New York-spun fable, A Different Man, Schimberg’s shape-shifting feast of a third feature I was lucky enough to catch earlier this year at the Berlinale and have been intrigued by ever since.
It begins in the neurotic template so keenly associated with the city, casting Stan as Edward, a sweet but lonely actor staring up at a gaping hole in his apartment ceiling. Struggling to book gigs, he often alarms strangers for no other reason than the facial tumours associated with his neurofibromatosis.
Making do with popping up in tedious office training videos, Edward’s world suddenly opens when The Worst Person in the World star Renate Reinsve’s gregarious Ingrid moves in next door. Will this become an unlikely rom-com? Or is the would-be playwright concealing ulterior motives for inveigling her way through his insecurities and into his confidence?
It’s deliberately uncomfortable that the conventionally handsome Stan layers on latex to step into this role rather than an actor with lived experience, like co-star Adam Pearson, who appeared in both Jonathan Glazer’s deeply unsettling Under the Skin and Schimberg’s previous feature, Chained for Life. Of course, Stan’s Marvel character Bucky Barnes had a bionic arm, while the actor does not. Schimberg’s toying with us, twisting the knife as A Different Man makes a stab at body horror in the vein of The Substance, as Edwards signs up for an excruciating experimental procedure that leads to his face peeling off as he stares startled in the mirror.
Faking a new identity, Guy, his newfound physical and psychological confidence is unfortunately deployed in the soulless art of real estate – another Trumpian echo – while attempting to make the most of Ingrid’s seeming betrayal by landing the lead role in her off-Broadway play that appears to be filched direct from his life’s story. But is it ok for him to don a mask to do so? Enter, stage left, Pearson as surface-level jovial English actor Oswald, who is nonetheless angling himself into position to act his own desires for the prized role.
Schimberg, who has a cleft palate, speaks with a strong and clear voice on odious ableism, impossible beauty standards, privilege, casting opportunities (or not) and more as he winds up the spiralling drama, spinning it from farce to horror and back again with discombobulating ease (not unlike The Substance). One of the most enriching and wrong-footedly nuanced movies of the year, it’s a marvellously spiky navigation of the subject captured by Wyatt Garfield’s grainy cinematography that gets the shades at play here.
Who is the ‘good’ guy is constantly flipping, much like the power play between Strong’s Cohn and Stan’s Trump. In A Different Man, Stan exceeds his already impressive turn in The Apprentice, joining forces with the gifted Pearson and Reinsve to deliver a trifecta of perfect performances in one of the year’s finest films. Schimberg’s serrated commentary makes for electrifying cinema, with the mask suiting Stan’s unveiled abilities to a tee.
Elsewhere
Here’s my chat with Memoir of a Snail director Adam Elliott for The Saturday Paper.
Over at ScreenHub, I review the new Cate Blanchett series Disclaimer and also the third season of Heartstopper.
For Time Out, I reviewed Melbourne Fringe shows Conduit Bodies, A Brief Episode, I Hope This Means Something, and Lady Macbeth Played Wing Defence.
I chatted to stars Radha Mitchell and Jesse Spencer about Last Days of the Space Age for the ABC, plus From Hilde, With Love director Andreas Dresen.
And just in time for Halloween, I curated this Screams, Thrills, Chills collection for SBS. There’s better stuff to watch here than the remake of Salem’ss Lot.