Given that pretty much every film Charlie Kaufman has been involved in gets on my list of favorites, I was always going to watch this. Plus, since this is a stop-motion animated film, it got on my wife’s list of interesting animated features to watch as well, which makes it a double-win. She did comment afterwards that it feels so small in scale and so modest in ambition, especially compared with a sprawling epic like Synecdoche, New York. That’s because it was adapted from a play by Kaufman himself and it stars the same three, and only three, performers who did the play: David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tom Noonan.
Michael Stone flies in to a convention in Cincinnati. A little past middle age, Michael does not seem like a happy man though he appears to be financially well off. Every interaction with other people nauseates and so he paints a lonely figure in his hotel room. Look closer however and you notice that something is wrong with this world. Every person that Michael meets seems to broadly share the same face. Every voice that he hears is the same, male droning monotone regardless of whether the speaker is male or female. When he calls up an old flame to have a drink with her, we realize that he has been suffering from this problem for years as she likewise appears to him in the same fashion. But then a miraculous thing happens: he hears a voice that is different and when he desperately searches through the rooms of the hotel for its owner, Lisa, he finds that she is different too. In that instant, no matter who she is or what she is like, it is easy to appreciate that he thinks she is the most beautiful thing in the world.
My wife noted that the film starts out kind of slow. Indeed, as it shows every detail of Michael’s mundane activities, checking in at the hotel, ordering room service, taking a shower, it would be excruciating if this were live-action. But the fact that this is realistically done stop-motion animation forces us to look upon this with fresh eyes. Even the stop-start nature of the animation that constantly reminds us that this isn’t live-action serves to heighten the eeriness of the world making it a rare example of taking advantage of the uncanny valley effect. The only flaw in the puppets is that from some angles it sometimes seems that there are cracks in the edges of their faces, which makes it seem that you could tear them off at any moment. It’s one of those things that must be deliberate, yet looks enough like a technical flaw that you’re not quite sure, making it a genius move.
The dreariness at the beginning of the film is also part of what makes the rapidly burgeoning relationship between Michael and Lisa so magical and yet believable. The way Michael hangs on her every word and is entranced by every little detail of her face makes perfect sense since to him she is literally the only other unique person in the world. One thoroughly disturbing sequence shows that everyone else in the world appears to him to be part of an undifferentiated, amorphous whole. The sex scene that follows their date has all of the awkwardness of two people making love with each other for the first time yet is full of tenderness and emotion. It is honestly one of the best sex scenes I’ve ever seen in a while.
Anomalisa obviously draws from the same creative well as the much earlier Being John Malkovich that Kaufman also wrote and that is also one of my early favorites. If anything, the sense of lonely solipsistic horror is even better done here. The rationalist in me wants to complain about the incongruities of the story. Why does he find it so difficult to tell others about his condition? It seems that explaining things properly would go a long way towards making his various relationships work. Also, how could he have possibly become such a successful customer service expert if he feels so alienated from everyone? Of course I understand that this is the kind of allegory that defies logical analysis and instead plays on primal and powerful fears. In that this is an unalloyed success and a worthy work by one of America’s most creative and introspective filmmakers.