by Frank Calvillo
Its hard to find a movie nowadays which you feel, rather than get and experience, rather than watch. With each year that passes, it seems that most movies seem more and more intent on topping the ones that come before by throwing large amounts of visuals and/or emotions at their audience to the point of literal, mental exhaustion. It’s a great relief then to discover the gem that is Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa, one of the few offerings of 2015 which managed to be one of the most simplistically beautiful and emotionally powerful films of the year.
In Anomalisa, customer service guru and suthor Michael Stone (David Thewlis) has just landed in Cincinnati, where he is expected to give a lecture the following morning on how to improve customer-client relations. But a dark cloud seems to continuously hang over Michael’s head as he finds himself revisiting past regrets and the prospect of having to continuously face a future full of empty meaning. Things change for Michael, however, when he encounters Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh); a slightly plain-looking woman he finds enchanting and who represents for Michael the idea that there may just be more to the world than he’s realized.
Anomalisa is ostensibly a film about depression and the challenge to not just continue with the every day, but how to cope with such a confusing and heavy state of mind. In Michael, we see someone who is simply going through the motions. He’s honoring obligations, fulfilling professional and personal duties, but he knows internally there’s something great that he’s lacking. Michael isn’t trying to hide or deny his depression. Instead, he’s slowly giving up the fight, and allowing it to consume him until there’s nothing left to consume. Yet there’s a part of him that believes in a glimmer of hope, even if that hope seems to be too far beyond his grasp.
Perhaps the most striking element throughout Anomalisa was the brilliant way the feeling of isolation was portrayed. In the film, every character Michael encounters, be they man, woman, or child, looks and sounds the same, with only slight modifications to voice and appearance. How incredible it was to see this and how insightful and empathetic of the filmmakers to decide this should be. When someone suffers from depression, they feel so alone and solitary, as if no one in the world knows what they are experiencing but them. It’s an incredibly disconcerting state of mind where a person literally feels it’s them against everyone else in the world; all the people who have it right but you.
It’s for this reason that Michael connects so well with Lisa, a woman with her own baggage, but who has decided to accept her insecurities and soldier on, despite approaching the everyday with great caution. The reason she’s the only other character in Anomalisa besides Michael who doesn’t share the same resemblance or voice as everyone else in the film is because she’s the only one he can connect to. Like Michael, Lisa is wounded and somewhat damaged, and because she is, only she can give him the ability to feel something.
I’ve been trying to come up with a certain way to describe just how visually breathtaking a film Anomalisa truly is, but there just aren’t enough words with which to do this. Through the use of puppets, modified by way of 3D animation, Anomalisa has a distinct and otherworldly quality to it, while still remaining so true to life. This is a heightened reality that’s never been seen before, even by Kaufman standards, and is made all the more surreal because of the magical and telling way he and co-director Duke Johnson have chosen to tell their film.
Forever an underrated character actor, Thewlis excels here in the title role of Michael, perfectly capturing the sense of depression and overall doom without overdoing it. While most would opt to play such emotions in such a dramatic fashion, Thewlis opts for the understated, showing how Michael has more or less surrendered to his current mental state and is now simply a robot. He’s paired beautifully with Leigh, who has never been this lovely and poetic in years. In her hands, Lisa’s optimism and deep vulnerability shine through, making her one of the most quietly complex characters seen on film this year. Finally, as the voice of all the other characters in the film, Tom Noonan does the unimaginable by slightly manipulating his voice and diction in the most subtle of ways to give some dimension to the many characters he is portraying. It is truly some of the best voice work ever put to film.
What I loved most about Anomalisa was that it felt like something so unique and special, a one-of-a-kind tale that could never be told again. And yet, throughout the film, there was never any doubt that I was watching a Kaufman work. The writer’s grasp on the human condition, the absurdist comedy of life, the crippling fears that dominate the mind, and the common man’s relationship with the existential are what initially made Kaufman one of the most prolific screenwriters of all time. If Anomalisa does anything this awards season, it simply re-establishes that notion.
