Review of Anomalisa (2015) by Noah B — 07 Jan 2016

"I Don't Know Yet. It's Just Obvious To Me That You Are".

It was the great Roger Ebert, then at the end of his life, who remarked on writing a particularly difficult review, "If you understand something you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don't, you won't be able to understand your own explanation." It is no coincidence that this was in response to the review of Synecdoche New York, which shares the same director as Anomalisa.

Rarely in life, and only if you are lucky, a movie comes a long that describes exactly what you are feeling exactly when you are feeling it. I have been fortunate enough for this to happen on at least four occasions. The first that I can remember was in watching There Will Be Blood. I was midway through high school and my lack of faith was reflected by the terrible and wonderful lead character. The second time was upon viewing the previously mentioned Synecdoche N.Y. Though I won't say much on that as I hope a review will follow someday. There was two years ago with Boyhood for somewhat obvious reasons... and now again with Anomalisa.

What is love? The answer, wrapped around and around a thousand times in my mind. The stars do not lead me to it. If it is real, can we save it? Can we save a love that keeps us up at night, then one day dies? It's pieces are in shambles in the living room and I can't put them together again. I don't know these answers, and it's clear that Anomalisa's writer and co-director, Charlie Kaufman, doesn't either. Though he wants to know.

You've waited for this film for what seems like your entire life, and only now you realize that you had been waiting. The rooms in your life change color, and the sheets are laid neatly across the bed. Though you didn't arrange them this way, did you? So now, you are somewhere else with someone else, but how?

Kaufman, whom we can feel in every frame, is an old friend pulling at our heart string of nostalgia. If Anomalisa offers any closure, it is the simple comfort that you are not alone in your confusion. In this way, to those who wander, Anomalisa is a relief. Yet, paradoxically, you will find very little here in the way of relief. For just like the stories of youth, the ending never changes; there is no ending. Anomalisa is walking home in the rain and finding your last cigarette, but not having a lighter.

We, like the characters in the film, are puppets: complete with wooden bodies and invisible strings. It is not a life. It is an act. We are puppets imagining what our lives would have been had we been human. Here is the richest of fiction, the kind that's utterly true.

So what of the actual details; the sets, the score, the cinematography? It doesn't matter here and it never did. I think we can save the labels for this one. For who would the labels serve? It feels only right that at the end I realize now this review wasn't for you. It was for me. No wonder I still have so much to say and so little ways in which to say it. So rather than try any harder to understand, I will end simply with the truth and only that which I know to be true. Go see Anomalisa, in any way you can.