Charlie Kaufman, like Lars Von Trier is one of those few directors in Hollywood who make daring films and are constantly pushing themselves on both form and content front with each film. With Anomalisa, he teams up with Duke Johnson to co-direct his first animated feature. Is it good? Let's dig in.
Off the bat, Kaufman's films are not for everyone; they can be too wordy, too self aware, too thought inducing and too left field for most but the inherent inventiveness and freshness holds a lot of pleasure for those who are willing open themselves to them.
So it is with Anomalisa - we are not spoon-fed a lot of info and most of the time the audience is left to figure things out on their own and to come to their own conclusion. This is made worse when the lead character is unreliable (i.e. mental space) and where everyone is voiced by the same actor and looks alike.
So you are not sure if our main character Michael Stone is crazy or if his animated world is the one that's crazy. Throw in some neat Easter eggs such as that Michael checks himself into Fregoli hotel. This symbolises the Fregoli delusion, a paranoid disorder where the sufferer believes different people are actually one person and that they are out to get him. It doesn't get more Kaufman than this.
As I watched the movie, I wondered why Kaufman opted to go full-on puppet animation on this, aside for wanting to show a puppet sex scene. The film quickly answers that question as things start to fall apart around Stone.
Animation makes it easier to convey some of the ideas of alienation and confusion the main character Stone goes through and makes us question the real more often. Duke Johnson does an amazing job at the stop motion animation and the actual design of the puppets and world. I'm surprised they didn't get the Animation Oscar.
The film is mainly voiced by 3 actors - the lead voices of Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Stone (David Thewlis), whilst everyone else is voiced by Tom Noonan. Which makes it incredibly freaky but feeds into this Fregoli delusion that Stone may or may not be going through.
So, in the age of superheroes whose films are neat and tidy, most are even forgettable as soon as you get home, Anomalisa makes one ask questions about ones own self actualization and fulfilment.
The film does not give you all the answers but forces you to come to ones own conclusion with the pieces it has given you, and that has to be admired.
Don't go into this expecting Inside Out and don't take your kids to it - it may be animated but this is truly R - rated material in every sense. Yet the R - rating somehow makes it more human than one would expect.
Rating
****
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* trash **if theres nothing better on tv *** meh its aight ****Almost Perfect *****Instant Classic