Charlie Kaufman's return to writing and directing comes with puppets this time around. Like Spike Jonze and Wes Anderson, Kaufman is the latest auteur American filmmaker to jettison mouth breathers in favor of fuzzy-looking inanimate objects. But Kaufman is going for something deeper here. Anomalisa fits snugly in the Kaufman portfolio as a film about life itself. It's a film of emotion and secrets, and most of all, love.
It's been 10 years since Synecdoche, New York, perhaps the greatest American film of the 21st century. And Charlie Kaufman hasn't lost his unique way of looking at the world. It's reflected in all his work. As a writer, Kaufman explores the human mind in the search for truth.
Kaufman's films Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Synecdoche, New York reveal much bigger truths than their stories might suggest. Anomalisa accomplishes the same feat.
Its tale is simple. Michael Stone (David Thewlis) is the author of an inspirational customer service book. He travels to Cincinnati where he checks into the Fregoli hotel, reconnects with an old girlfriend, argues with his wife on the phone, and flirts with two fans who chose the Fregoli just in case Michael did too. He attempts to seduce one of them, Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and discovers he's found someone who's different from all the rest.
Being different is important to Michael because everyone around him, as you slowly begin to realize, looks exactly the same. Co-directors Kaufman and Duke Johnson fill the screen with the same puppet faces in every scene. Kaufman is setting us up. "Fregoli" is a reference to the Fregoli delusion, a mental disorder that causes the patient to see the same person in everyone he or she meets. Kaufman films are filled with stuff like this. In Synecdoche, New York, the protagonist, Caden Cotard, starts believing he's dead, a reference to the Cotard delusion which afflicts people with that belief. Everything means something, and the joy of watching Kaufman's films is in unraveling his mysteries, most of which aren't nearly as overt.
So why is Michael seeing the same face in everyone? Has his life lost all meaning? Is he in some kind of Hell on Earth in a hotel like Barton Fink? The answer seems simpler. Michael has lost his belief in love. He's depressed. And the world reflects his own disappointment in it. He's a smart guy. He's just sick of all the inane babble and his clockwork life. When he meets Lisa, Michael sees her. She's different. And immediately, something wakes up inside him that makes him want to live again.
The eye-opening revelation that is new love is something we can all identify with. By creating this loving relationship with puppets (something he experimented with in Being John Malkovich's marionettes), Kaufman's forcing us to see beyond the melodrama. He furthers the notion by giving Michael and Lisa a graphic sex scene, a sequence seemingly frought with peril (as anyone who's seen Team America will attest) that Kaufman and Johnson navigate with such delicacy, it's impossible not to admire the humanity in it.
The humanity of Anomalisa is why it's such a great film. The slow-pace of the story and the seeming "normality" of what happens at the beginning might make some question the method. But the subtlety of the film revealing all those similar faces (another Malkovich repeat) could only be done in an animated movie. A dream sequence later in the film further proves the format's meaning. As for Kaufman, he's made his most hopeful film yet. In the search for truth, he's found love at its center.
Grade: A-
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