Review: Anomalisa

"What is it to be human? What is it to ache? What is it to be alive?" motivational speaker Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis) muses. For Michael, a Brit living in Los Angeles who has touched down in Cincinnati for a speaking engagement, to be alive is to be half-dead, wading through a mire of people who seem intent on bludgeoning him with their incessant small talk.

It is no accident that Michael checks into a hotel whose name, Fregoli, provides ample explanation not only for his existential crisis but also for directors Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson's decision to employ Tom Noonan to voice all of the characters that Michael encounters. The Fregoli delusion is a rare disorder wherein a person believes that different people are, in fact, one single person who dons many disguises and who is out to persecute them. Indeed, Michael Stone's entire world appears to have melded into one monotonously droning person, be it the taxi driver who can't stop recommending that Michael visit the zoo and also try the chili or his wife and child, whom he phones from his hotel room.

Michael seems out-of-sorts. He thinks of his ex-girlfriend Bella, whose letter excoriating him for their breakup he reads and re-reads. He decides to contact her, she's taken aback but agrees to meet him for a drink at the hotel bar. Their reunion is awkward - it's all too clear that Bella has never recovered from his leaving her and it's painfully evident that Michael is allowing his loneliness to impair his judgment - and it ends sourly. Desperate for companionship, Michael is literally coming apart when he hears a different voice. The voice belongs to Lisa (voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh), a fan of his who, along with her friend Emily, is staying at the same hotel. He is beguiled by Lisa, who cannot believe that he would be interested in her over Emily. Their time together steers Anomalisa into pathways that are intimate, enigmatic, surreal, and just plain sad and beautiful.

Anomalisa, which originated as a sound play for the Theater of a New Ear project in 2005, shares much in common with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, another Kaufman-penned tale of a man battling his own fragile psyche. Michael believes Lisa to be his saving grace, that he can perhaps escape the unbearable mundanities of his life and create something new with her. It's doomed from the start, of course. Kaufman enhances the manner in which a business trip can physically and emotionally remove one from the tethers of everyday reality. The surroundings are familiar, yet oddly alien. Anything is possible, perhaps even happiness, but tomorrow always brings round the reality.

Anomalisa also addresses the sense that to be human may go hand in hand with being a puppet, that one may never be in control of one's own destiny for there are too many attachments - marriage, parenthood, career, so many responsibilities. The puppets themselves are disquieting figures - their faces created by 3-D printing, their skins fibrous, and eyes that are remarkable in their expressiveness. Yet these are unmistakably puppets, with very visible seams across their foreheads and around their jawlines. Their faces can be interchangeable in much the same way that humans can present one face to the world but possess a completely different one underneath. And are we individuals, each and every one of us, or are we variations on a single theme?

Anomalisa contemplates this and much more. Heady themes aside, Kaufman has crafted a love story full of grace that will move you more than you realise. The morning after the night before is poignantly captured; its power may shatter you into pieces.

Anomalisa

Directed by: Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson

Written by: Charlie Kaufman

Starring: David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan