Review of Anomalisa (2015) by Michael M — 03 Feb 2016

Charlie Kaufman's body of work is one to cherish. He's the screenwriter behind acclaimed quirky, brutally honest, and often funny works such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, and Synecdoche, New York, the last of which he also directed, and which I confidently say is one of my very favorite movies.

Synecdoche, New York is one of those films that is so complete and perfectly expressive of what it can feel like to exist, to long for, and to feel alone that it may as well be the last movie made of its kind. How can you top this one?

After seeing Anomalisa, I'd say Kaufman more than justifies this addition to his filmography. He wonderfully rekindles that sense of melancholy and longing which lies at the core of his work, but also takes on themes of love and isolation with new insight. He affirms his status as one of cinema's great artists. Once again, I was deeply moved.

Kaufman directs this film alongside Duke Johnson, whose experience lies in stop motion animation. Did I mention that Anomalisa is a stop motion film? It is, and it's impressive as hell. It's an unusual choice to animate a low-key drama set in a hotel room and taxi cab among other places, but Johnson and his team make every movement breathe with life in a way that life can't even match. The way the faces move and the way the bodies walk evoke a feeling of melancholy that lies at the heart of the film. The movement is slow with many pauses, uncharacteristic of the fast-paced action/adventure style we normally see with animation. It also adds a new layer to the surrealism and awareness of the film's creators which we come to expect in a Kaufman film.

The lighting is also beautiful here. There's an I-don't-know-how-they-did-it quality to the textures of the rainy windows and night of the city. It brings the characters' faces to life in how softly it touches them, in addition to having a symbolic role.

Parts of this film are hilarious. My audience was laughing out loud fairly consistently throughout the first thirty minutes. Other parts of it are painfully awkward. Scenes go on a little too long, we see a little too much, the characters choose the wrong words, and are in general strange people we might not enjoy spending time with in real life. This is all great stuff.

On the whole, Anomalisa plays like a dream. The puppets almost being more human than us, the world not being our world but at the same time a stark reflection of it.

You'll likely want time to mull this one over. It's bizarre and abrupt but it gets under the skin. My revelation here which I expect others will have, was something like, "my god, this is me.".