[yasr_overall_rating]
A man crippled by the mundanity of his life experiences something out of the ordinary.
Charlie Kaufman is brilliant. Charlie Kaufman is also quirky. Or even a little strange. From “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” to “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation,” he has given audiences some of the smartest and most unique films of the last twenty years. With “Anomalisa,” he tries his hand at directing a stop-motion animated film full of awkward details. In it, we meet Michael Stone (David Thewlis), a depressed, self-absorbed middle aged man who is a star in the world of customer service. He goes to a Cincinnati conference where he’s the keynote speaker. While waiting for his conference, he has an affair with Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), an acolyte with a scarred face and a beautiful voice. Her voice stands out to Michael, because literally everyone else in the film takes their collective voice from actor Tom Noonan. It soon becomes obvious Michael simply cannot connect with people. The film becomes a commentary on our disconnected world and being a middle aged man caught inside it.
The voice acting here remains top notch, with Thewlis and Leigh sliding easily into their respective roles. Each voices Michael or Lisa with tremendous expressiveness, creating extraordinary characters. Noonan’s turn voicing everybody else satisfies from the voice actor’s point of view. However, after about 30 minutes into the film, his voice just became an irritating gimmick. Kaufman made his mark in cinema with such boldly quirky devices, such as placing himself in the middle of “Adaptation” to help ease the audience into that complex tale. The quirkiness in “Anomalisa” works well in spurts, and much of the time it serves the story well. Unfortunately, the quirks become more the focus of the story than the actual characters themselves. The symbolism and meaningful tension become obscured by the atmosphere created by each layer of weirdness Kaufman piles on top of the characters.
What begins as a simple tale of one man’s angst and inability to cope with the life he lives instead becomes an overly complex series of relational missteps. As Michael tries and fails to connect with one person after another, he wonders if the problem lies within himself. No matter the depth of his relationships, he always seems to find a reason to let people go. As each scene goes by, it’s clear Kaufman has a specific underlying message. The problem remains the unnecessary layers of complexity he piles upon what should be a simple, emotionally moving plot. All of this works well for the critics hailing it as a masterpiece. The amount of obscure symbolism and allusion leave the audience wondering what they saw, instead of coming out of the theater with clear understanding of “Anomalisa’s” underlying themes.
Visually, the film is a feast of interesting, and all too realistic, characters with Michael and Lisa set apart from the others by their well defined figures juxtaposed against a sea of sameness. The environment adds comedic undertones, with the Cincinnati Zoo bearing the brunt of a running joke. The animation and movement of each character is nothing short of astounding. Kaufman gives us artistically dull browns and grays reinforcing the mundane life Michael finds himself stuck in. The only splashes of brightness and color come at odd moments of confusion and disconnectedness as Michael fumbles his way into embarrassment. The puppets use anatomically correct physique, which is shown in graphic detail, and are brilliantly rendered in detail.
“Anomalisa” certainly covers a wide range of human experience in just a short 92 minutes and it’s easy to see why the accolades have come its way. I thought Kaufman’s quirkiness finally caught up with him, and he made a film a little too quirky and unique to really make much sense. Ultimately, though, how the film is interpreted will depend on the viewer.
In select theaters now
