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Film Review - Anomalisa

“What is it to be human? What is it to ache? What is it to be alive?”

Charlie Kaufman, the writer of “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation”, has recently released a film that explores the layers of human connection, “Anomalisa.” Michael Stone, (voiced by David Thewlis) is a motivational speaker in Cincinnati for a conference. He stays in the hotel Al Fregoli, named by Kaufman after a mental condition that causes the patient to believe that different people are the same person. It’s exactly Michael’s disillusionment with the world and his deep loneliness that seem to trigger the Fregoli delusion where everybody has the same face and sounds like voice actor Tom Noonan. This is until Michael finds a woman named Lisa, who looks and sounds different. The two find each other and use the night to help themselves desperately attempt to feel whole.

Watching the film unravel feels like a dream. It injects realistic human characteristics and flaws to animated puppets. There are moments where the film is incredibly self-conscious, when Michael removes his face to reveal that the parts inside him are of a puppet’s, and throughout the film when Kaufman and Duke Johnson (co-director) make a conscious effort to alter the degree to which the puppets appear lifelike. The puppet’s eyes look as though they are moist and aware, while the skin looks fuzzy. This might be to express Michael’s existential plight, or a way to express a commentary on how the filmmakers see the world, to somehow put up a mirror onto the audience.

Kaufman writes the screenplay with tenderness, and humor. Most of the dialogue that goes on in the film (before and after Michael meets Lisa) is predictable and nuanced. Very little is said when the lines are taken out of context, yet during the film it exposes the audience to the character’s vulnerability and aches. It explores a character’s intrinsically motivated change in a story, rather than one motivated by third party events, which is a theme that seems to be present in most if not all Kaufman films. Michael isn’t alone in how he feels alone. He represents a community of people alienated from everybody else because of their inability to be vulnerable and open. The film heartbreakingly captures the longing for human contact and the things people do to try and experience it. It shows the fragility and intricacy of the human condition through an ephemeral, unhappy, and desperate night at the Al Fregoli, which was, according to Michael Stone, an anomaly, an Anomalisa.

By Sofia del Carmen, Batch 2018