Originally published January 2017

As soon as you see the first shot of a character in Charlie Kaufman's latest film, Anomalisa, you'll realize what makes this movie different. Kaufman, known for his mind-manipulating movies Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich, wrote and co-directed Anomalisa with Duke Johnson to bring another movie to the screen about a person's mental stability. It's more subtle in its conveyance of mental illness than his other films, yet just as dramatic and surreal as ever with the help of the animation.

If you couldn't tell from images or trailers, Anomalisa is a stop-motion movie with nothing but animatronic puppets. There are no live actors. There are only three voices in the whole movie. But this is not a puppet movie for children. It has some serious adult issues and adult scenes, it just happens to use puppets to tell its story. The aesthetic certainly makes Anomalisa a unique movie, but what about the rest of the film? Does it all stand up to scrutiny, or are we expected to be just blown away by the stop-motion?

Pros

• The stop-motion animation is a spectacle worth seeing

• The hard turns this movie takes are surprising and intriguing

• The unique design choices pay off

• Some funny moments

Cons

• Sympathy for Michael is exhausted by the end

• Awkward interactions, though intentional, make the film difficult to watch at times

• The actual story is not necessarily interesting, just the way it's told

• The characters are not interesting

Plot & Thoughts

Anomalisa is one of those films that started to click with me a lot more after I finished watching it and thinking about the mechanics involved. The story itself is relatively simple, sad, and familiar, but it is made more interesting by how it's told. Anamolisa is a movie that, at first, I thought was filled with just a bunch of vain design choices around making a bland and rudimentary film more interesting-looking. Once I sat and reflected on what I watched, I realized that all those choices were far more deliberate than what I initially realized.

David Thewlis is the voice of Michael Stone. Stone is a successful author and analyst in the field of customer support. The film opens with him arriving in puppet-Cincinnati to give a speech to numerous corporate representatives the following day about how to provide the best customer support. It's immediately apparent that Michael has some baggage around Cincinnati with a love life that he left behind. It's also quickly apparent that he's the most unique puppet on the screen. Every other person that he encounters has a similar face structure and the same voice, provided by Tom Noonan. Man, woman, and child are all voiced by Tom Noonan, who has a comically flat tone to his voice—this can sometimes be funny in the same way Trey Parker of South Park provides 90% of the voices on his show. This seems like a strange aesthetic choice at first, but much later in the film, its purpose becomes more clear.

To sum it up, Michael, despite his success in telling people how to interact with one another, is having trouble interacting with people around him. It seems like he'd like to do anything other than talk to other people, including his wife and son. Certain details about his actions and behavior point to him being a typical man going through his mid-life crisis, but there are other things at work that suggest he has some serious mental issues. He appears to be partially aware of his own instabilities but is unable to really cope with the dissociative disorder he likely has. It was right around the point where I started to consider his possible mental illness that something happened in the movie.

The first third of the film is filled with flat, empty dialogue between Michael and other people meant to display his utter disinterest in them. In a way, it made me disinterested as well. I was getting a bit bored, so it was a good thing the stop-motion helped carry along my interest. When this particular moment happened, I suddenly became way more intrigued by what Anomalisa had to say. I paid more attention after that, waiting for more moments of insight into what this movie was really about and the design choices at play. It finally started to make more sense when the third voice of the film arrived with Lisa, voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Lisa is an awkward young woman with her own personal issues. She is shy, has a scar above her head, and thinks very little of herself. Personally, I didn't see anything special about her as a character, but Michael is nonetheless drawn to her. She is, after all, the only other puppet in the movie with a facial structure and voice that's different from everyone else. He becomes quickly infatuated with her in a way she's not used to and awkward interactions ensue. I'd love to say more about what happens in the movie and discuss the implications of everything because the way the film ties it all together is the whole reason I ended up liking Anomalisa. However, to explain all those reasons would be a disservice to those who haven't seen it.

The main problem with Anomalisa is that if you don't consider those subtle implications, the movie ends up being a bland and boring experience. The stuff the characters say and do is nothing really unique or interesting. The characters themselves, including Michael and Lisa, are quite standard individuals who provide very little to the story if you don't consider the mental health issues between the two. To enjoy the movie, you have to be looking beyond the surface level of the story it's telling, and consider how it's being told and why it's being told that way. When I thought more about the potential mental illness of Michael and what the story was really about, I understood the choices of the filmmakers a lot more and had a much better experience.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

The important thing to consider when watching Anomalisa is that everything is being done with a purpose in mind, even the negatives. The dialogue and the characters are bland and boring. The story isn't new or interesting. However, if you consider the importance of specific moments and the deliberate choices behind making the movie the way it was made, your perspective of Anomalisa may change. It's not about the characters or the story. It's about how it all fits together. There's a story within one here, and that sub-level story is far more interesting than what Anomalisa immediately offers.

Do you agree or disagree? Tell me what you think in the comments!

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