I had read some advice a few months ago in The A.V. Club to avoid any information about this film unless I was a Kaufman agnostic, which I am not, and so I studiously avoided any articles or trailers. I was aware the film was out but I really wanted to see 'The Witch' and so I thought I'd see this later if it was still on. When I arrived, however, the screening had been cancelled and I hurriedly picked up a ticket for this and sat down, not knowing what to expect.

It didn't take an awfully long time for me to get back into a Kaufman groove and I enjoyed Michael's uncomfortable moment on the plane at the beginning. I was very taken with how intricately made the sets were and charmed by the little details like the way the toilet paper was folded into a triangle in the hotel room. I like the slow pace and the awkwardness, and after Michael checked into the hotel I thought to myself, "that bellhop sounds an awful lot like the clerk." When Michael goes down to the hotel bar, it finally dawned on me: everyone apart from Michael has the same face and the same voice. This realisation, a little late though it may have been, had me smiling for the rest of the film. I don't know of anyone but Charlie Kaufman who would create something like this.

Despite the entire cast being made up of puppets, they're able to convey a tenderness and humanity that goes beyond what I can remember seeing in most films in the last few years. Lisa singing Girls Just Wanna Have Fun manages to be the most powerful moment in the film, making me feel embarrassed, amused and then achingly sad. David Thewlis' vocal performance grated on me enormously but the more I think about it, I don't think that Michael could have been voiced in any other way.

I've been thinking about this film almost constantly since I went to see it. I work in telephony-based customer service and the film explores many of the issues that I think about day-to-day. I look forward to being able to explore the depths of the film again but I don't think it'll settle anything - this will stay with me for a long time and there's nothing more I could ask for from a Kaufman film.

20 minutes into this movie I was wondering why this was animated. It wasn't bringing any value to the plot, or style at all. It was just animation replacing normal, easy to film life. I was going to knock this down a bit for this reason for sure.

Then the film ended and I was totally wrong. In fact, by the end I was totally wrong about a lot going in. The details are a little dangerous to talk about with people who haven't seen it yet. I don't want to have you walk in with predisposed thought. So if you haven't seen it yet, go do yourself a favor and let me know what you thought afterwards. I loved it in the end.

SPOILERS BELOW
If you've seen it and don't get my love of this, here I go. This film slowly seeds his mental illness perfectly. I didn't even think about it until over halfway in, but by then it all looks so obvious. He's taking pills at the start. Everyone is voiced the same at the start. Everyone has the same face at the start.

Early on, you simply think it is a style choice. But when you get a unique face and voice to show up, suddenly the rest stands out even stronger. Now you're learning what it is like to be in his shoes. The mental illness slowly growing keeps you from fixing the problem.

If one day you woke up and you were colorblind, you'd freak out. If over a few years you slowly went colorblind, would you notice?

An adult film in stop-motion.

A middle-aged executive with too much power is going through a mid-life crisis, and has an affair. The same effect is created in the audience by having the same male voice in almost all characters in the film. The world becomes more interesting --- for both the executive and the audience --- when a different (feminine) voice finally shows up in the film. And so, because a real woman is different from the sameness that pervades his life, the executive falls in love with the woman --- who happens to be a groupie of his. He even plans on divorcing his wife and abandoning his son. But after a drunken night of sex, even this new and unique woman's voice begins to change to the same voice he hears everywhere --- and this happens when this executive starts attempting to control the unsophisticated girl who has become his new love interest in order to change her to his wants and expectations. I suppose that is the point of the movie. One must allow people to be the anomalies they are to begin with and not attempt to change them into other versions of ourselves, or else the world will become extremely bland and boring. It is this message that rescues it from simply being an adult sex film --- albeit one done in stop-motion.

And I suppose there is another bright spot to this movie. It clearly shows that men and women are different, and not simply interchangeable. The movie is truly unpleasant when only a male voice is heard throughout. But then a feminine voice shows up, and her voice is the most refreshing sound in the movie, for the audience as well as the main protagonist. Surely this is evidence that the significant difference of sex actually is important to our very senses. Against those who would deny the objective existence of biological gender this movie is a refreshing counterexample.

However, the film also seems to teach that abandoning your wife and children for the sake of a paramour if they have become boring to you is an acceptable price to pay.

So, I got to see Anomalisa and it was fantastic! In terms of the actual narrative, Anomalisa is probably the least complicated out of all of these. However, the intelligent choices that align the themes in this story ensure that there's no lack of interpretation. I mean, anyone who understands the definition of the word 'anomaly' can likely see the purpose in this film being so unique in the first place. In a world where almost every film seems exactly the same, this one stands out in a refreshing way.

One of the most shining elements of this film is the animation. Despite this film being pretty contained in its scale, the cinematography was very impressive. There are quite a few shots that caught me off guard and had me thinking: "wait a minute, this shot has been going on seamlessly for a while now," and in stop motion animation having to reshoot a shot could mean months of extra work. Having the camera follow the main character through small doors into different rooms in the building is not only impressive on a technical level, but it subconsciously adds legitimacy to the universe, making the location feel like it's a very real place.

There's a particular shot where a character can be seen in the reflection of our main character's eyes and I can't imagine how complicated that shot must have been to set up. I'm really hoping that there's a special feature on the Blu-ray release to help explain these things because the animation is seriously impressive. With Charlie Kaufman having seemingly no experience in animation, this movie was co-directed by Duke Johnson. This is his first feature length film but his previous works include Moral Orel.

Now, the animation in Anomalisa has quite the drastically different approach in comparison to Moral Orel. Where Moral Orel was quite cartoony, Anomalisa had a far more grounded approach. This is by far the most human stop motion film I've ever seen. A lot of detail was placed on both vocal and physical character mannerisms, making these characters seem like very real people. Based on the design alone, there's a sense of realism and surrealism at the same time. The character's eyes were more realistic than any animation I've seen, but at the same time there's a consistent design choice they could not have been achieved in live action.

Once again, Charlie Kaufman has impressed me with his sense of purpose, with each decision being made like a puzzle piece that fits into the larger picture. Sure, the decision looks good on its own, but with the rest of the film in context you can see how it fits.

Suffice it to say, I cannot wait until I can see this film for a second time. Because somehow, despite only having seen it once, it's already starting to grow on me. 10/10

After reading some articles, it seems that the movie is based on the Fregoli delusion, but I thought it could be given a much wider meaning in relation to mental health in general.


Michael is supposedly the master of communication, he even writes books about it, yet he seems to be constantly running away from human interactions. Doing the same things, meeting the same people, having the same small talk… everyone looks and sounds the same, like a puppet. Even when he happens to [spoiler]find someone who feels “different”, it won’t take long before they end up “changing”. That’s what Michael has kept blaming his former lovers and current wife for, even though it’s not hard to figure out that he is just a narcissistic self-indulgent asshole. Lisa is just one more puppet, not that different from the Japanese doll he buys at the store (the two happen to have the same voice and scars on their face).[/spoiler]

That made me think about how mental illness and depression can change your perception of the world, and how that can end up hurting everyone around you.

Interpretations aside, the movie makes creative use of the stop-motion medium to paint the subtle portrait of a puppet that looks more human than live-action actors. Slow-paced and mostly inconsequential, but still surprisingly compelling.