Anomalisa

[StevePulaski]

Anomalisa (2015)
Directed by: Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson

Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis) in Anomalisa.

Rating: ★★★★

Michael Stone's (voiced by David Thewlis) alienation and loneliness in Anomalisa is one very communicable and understandable in a metaphorical sense. Everyone, both men and women, sound and look the same (all voiced by Tom Noonan) with little distinguishing features other than when and how they happen to show up and intrude on Michael's life. Michael has a wife and son, whom he sees as looking the same interchangeable, almost plastic way as everyone else, and despite relatively short, even stern conversations with those around him, it doesn't take a psychologist to note that he's starving for companionship.

He finally finds what he's looking for - someone who breaks the mold and doesn't look, sound, and behave the same way as everyone else - whilst on a business trip in Cincinnati. A successful author and public speaker concentrating his field of study on the path to humanize customer service relations, Michael is due to give a big speech at a hotel conference center the day before he meets Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who is vacationing with her girlfriend specifically to hear Michael speak. An evening of mojitos and cocktails winds up making the three of them buzzed, with Michael getting the courage to ask Lisa to come back to his room.

Lisa is a uniquely special girl because she not only doesn't believe that she is special but can't bring herself to admit it or even recognize her qualities when they're pointed out to her. She repeatedly engages in self-deprecation by openly calling herself a "moron" or telling herself to repeatedly shut up when she's made one small conversational mishap or misinterpreted something. Her beauty and true character lies in the fact that she's so insecure and unsure about herself, when she's really smarter and more interesting than everyone else around her.

At one point in his hotel-room, Michael and Lisa simply lie next to one another, with Lisa talking about her love for language, specifically French and Italian, while Michael just clings to her right side, softly kissing her cheek and brushing against her hair. It's one of the most romantic scenes in any film of the respective year.

And it's all done with stop-motion animation, specifically characters and pieces constructed with the use of a 3D printer.

But all of this becomes a moot point in Anomalisa, as it inches its way towards greatness, while making you almost entirely forget it's a heavily constructed, animated work. Its soundtrack is largely sparse, as it relies mostly on the ambiance and atmosphere created in order to give an almost deafening silence/tranquility to the environment of the film. Characters speak with very conservative, mannered sensibilities, and - so atypical for many movies - engage in conversations by pausing for about a half to a full second once a character is done speaking before they begin speaking. These are the subtleties of a film so serene that you begin to wonder if the filmmakers behind it are consciously doing these things or are they simply capturing real life with a constructed, manipulated form.

The film was directed by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, the former being the renowned, original writer of films like Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and the latter a careful stop-motion animation director who has dabbled into a wide forte of television and short films. Together, the two create visual and narrative harmony with Anomalisa, focusing entirely on the mannerisms of loneliness, the starvation for connection and intimacy, the kind of characters just goofy enough to exist in a deceptively light-hearted film but just realistic enough to believe and love, and the wretched commonality one can experience with people until they find the much-discussed "one" or "perfect person." This is a film I didn't simply watched but wound up loving every minute of unconditionally.

Voiced by: David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Tom Noonan. Directed by: Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson.