I didn't take as many notes during my viewing of Anomalisa as I did during the other six films I watched over five months for this series. While I had been scurrying to identify sometimes minor similarities between the films in the hope of excavating the full thematic breadth of Kaufman's work -- I'm saying that like it's a bad thing -- here I kind of let the totality of the film wash over me on this, my second viewing.
And I landed in about the same spot on the film as I did the first time, finding that I admired it and what it was trying to do without feeling like it totally works.
The first thing it has going for it is, of course, its form. Stop-motion animation has traditionally been used in the service of really outlandish or fantastical stories, so it's fun to absorb the banal imagery captured by the style here, such as a naked middle aged man toweling himself off after a shower, or picked up a large vibrating dildo that he accidentally knocks off the counter at a sex shop that he accidentally visits on the recommendation of a clueless cab driver. While expending much of its energies on the absolutely quotidian aspects of life, and therefore feeling very realistic in that sense, it also calls attention to its own artificiality, revealing the juncture points in the designs of the puppets, and how they threaten to (and sometimes do) fly apart into mechanical malfunction at any moment.
Then also as a positive you have the Kaufman themes: A sense of alienation from one's own life. A constant feeling of disappointment in the alternatives available, romantic or otherwise. The awkwardness of physical and emotional intimacy. A preoccupation with the minor faults of other human beings, which leads to an overall sense of ennui and minor misanthropy. The notion that everywhere you look, there's an inescapable drabness and sameness that will be with you until the day you die. But ultimately a sense of the inability to escape from one's own self.
These things are all good, so why is Anomalisa not a slam dunk for me like Kaufman's other films are?
Well for one, they aren't all slam dunks. I still get more out of this than I get out of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and its impact on me is probably comparable to that of Human Nature.
It can't be the overwhelming sense of melancholy the film instills in us, because that's present in other Kaufman films, some of which reach equally bleak conclusions.
I'm not sure I'm going to be able to answer this question. Sometimes different delivery methods of the same themes just don't work equally as well as one another. And in certain of Kaufman's films, particularly Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the director is adding a creative element that expands on what Kaufman is giving us with his writing.
That last should not logically be a problem for Anomalisa, where it should be said that Kaufman is actually the co-director. He collaborates here with Duke Johnson, a specialist in stop motion animation, who oversaw the stop motion in the Community episode done in that style, among others. Though I don't think I've seen any of Johnson's other work -- I can't actually remember if I saw the Community or not -- it appears as though Johnson's contributions here are only technical, while directors like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry also have their own creative energy and vision that adds a layer to what Kaufman is already bringing to the project. (Now I'm pretty much parroting a good friend's standard talking points on Kaufman and Jonze, which is that they need each other to bring out the best in the other.)
But I don't want to diminish the importance of stop motion to this film, and that will lead me to the first of my real comparison points with other Kaufman films. There's no doubt that Johnson brings an immeasurable amount to the project in that he can actually execute Kaufman's vision, which does require this form to be really achievable. The "gimmick," if you will, that Kaufman employs here is that everyone except the title character has the same face for our protagonist, Michael Stone -- essentially a revisiting of the most memorable scene in Being John Malkovich. While they obviously achieved that outcome in that movie by superimposing Malkovich's head on two dozen other bodies, that was just one scene that was played for broad comedy. I don't think you can execute that in live action over a whole movie without severely undermining the film's overall solemn tone. You can with stop motion though.
One particular use of this "gimmick" put me in mind of Human Nature, actually. During the overnight in which Lisa and Michael are sleeping in his Cincinnati hotel room, the camera looks out the window at the world outside as the sky goes from night to morning. We see on the right a billboard for the Cincinnati Zoo, which has a humorous slogan that calls back to Michael's conversation with the cab driver on the drive from the airport: "It's zoo-sized!" The picture is of a monkey with the same face as that worn by all the other people Michael sees, excluding Lisa but eventually starting to include her as well. Of course, Human Nature deals with what is essentially a monkey with the face of a man as its main character, and there are other times throughout his filmography Kaufman has returned to his preoccupation with animals.
I'll close by comparing the film to the one that would come next for him, which inspired this series but which I won't watch again to close it out for lack of remaining time slots on the calendar. Probably the most interesting scene for me is his breakfast with Lisa after their night together, moments after he has impulsively proposed running off with her to start a new life. He can't enjoy even a minute of exultation and confidence in this choice, as he is immediately drawn to the way Lisa clanks her teeth with the fork while she eats, and that bits of scrambled egg fall out of her mouth because she's talking while she's eating. The very next moment he accuses her of being controlling, so in the space of about 90 seconds she's acquired three significant demerits that he hadn't seen until that exact moment in time. It's just a reminder of Kaufman's essential world view that it is impossible for a person, specifically him, to trust even a fleeting sense of happiness, as it is always complicated by the realities and imperfections of life. Plus, a tendency to nitpick others' faults and use those as justification to end a relationship lays the groundwork for I'm Thinking of Ending Things, at the point where we are consuming the film on only its most literal level. In a way the outlook of Anomalisa is even more depressing, as Michael is seeing and being derailed by these things not at the end of a relationship, but at its very beginning -- which then also becomes its end.
I guess I won't close just yet because I shouldn't leave any discussion of Anomalisa without commenting on two more things.
One is the vocal work. David Thewlis makes a great perturbed Kaufman protagonist, aware of his need to function as a social being in society, as in the agonizing small talk with the cab driver, his involuntary participation hanging by a thread of strained politeness. Deep down the man loathes others as much as he loathes himself. Then you have Jennifer Jason Leigh so perfectly capturing the hesitations and insecurities of Lisa, a woman with crippling self-esteem issues who can only comprehend Michael's interests in her as a joke he's playing on her. Michael successfully breaking down that wall is really liberating for her, as it's a joy to watch this goofy yet cautious personality enjoy the simple pleasures of singing and pushing elevator buttons while beginning to trust the enthusiasm Michael shows for her. The most demanding role, though, belongs to Tom Noonan, who creates a handful of different personalities for the remaining characters in the movie he plays, all of them engaging, as this actor naturally always is. (Don't forget he's a returning cast member from Synecdoche, New York, the last of the Kaufman films I had yet to name check in this post.) Kaufman doesn't ask him to alter his voice significantly from role to role, which is part of the point -- he doesn't, for example, change the pitch of his voice when he plays female characters. But that doesn't mean there isn't nuance in the different roles he voices, and it's really impressive to see.
I also wanted to touch on the hilarious dream sequence where Michael visits the basement of the hotel to speak to the manager on a "delicate matter." I love the little injection of absurdity in an otherwise straightforward movie, where Michael has to drive a golf cart to the other end of the basement in order to reach the man's desk, but also has to avoid a large pit in the middle of the floor, which he does not manage to do on his return. This scene also sort of reminds us of the "Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich" scene, as there is a pool of what appear to be secretaries who all tell Michael they love him, after the manager has started out by making this same declaration. This also culminates in Michael losing the part of his puppet's face that contains the nose and mouth, a sort of body horror that might be similar to Malkovich seeing his own head on all the other bodies.
Okay now I will really close with one exchange that I jotted down that I really liked, with the cab driver:
"Have you been to Cincinnati?"
"Yes, once before."
"Oh, it's changed since then."
Since when? Funny.
It also suggests a presumption that Cincinnati would have been disappointing to Michael on his previous visit, that this cab driver needs to talk up the city in his informal role as ambassador to newly arriving tourists. Little does he know that Michael is disappointed by every city he visits because he is disappointed with his life, and with himself.
It occurs to me that I have written more words for this discussion of Anomalisa than for any other single film in this series. Including these words that I'm typing right now, this piece is 1933 words long, exceeded only by the 2208 words I wrote for the double post including both Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine.
The conclusion, other than that it's appropriate to end the series with the longest piece, is that I actually do get a lot of Anomalisa, and maybe the more I think about it the more I will realize that it really is up there with Kaufman's other masterpieces. Or maybe even that I have grown to appreciate it more even just during the course of writing this post and exploring my thoughts in real time. Maybe it's that the Kaufman movies I love more unproblematically also leave me with a sort of comforting epiphany, even when they are bleak, and that this one doesn't.
That doesn't make it worse, though. It may just make it the most consummately Kaufman movie of all.
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