On Anomalisa

It is not unusual for animation to move us with its humanity. The inferno in Toy Story 3 (2010) or the waterfall scene in Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) illustrate this perfectly, but for animation to appear so human, so anthropomorphic is a novelty. And this isn’t even necessarily what is being aimed for in this Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson collaboration. Anomalisa deals with the mundanity of human vulnerability, yet includes aspects of fantasy to communicate this, much in the same way all Kaufman films have; he really is expert at dissecting and analysing very relatable emotions in inventive ways. Anomalisa is subtler than say Being John Malkovich (1999) or Synecdoche, New York (2008) or perhaps his best film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) in how it presents the world for Kaufman’s characters. The sense of loss, the affair, the feeling of hopelessness are all laid bare and made wonderfully apparent in the simple metaphor of homogeneous faces and voices, something that is again so subtle, it isn’t at first obvious. Whenever any Kaufman film comes around it is something special, something decidedly different from English speaking cinema from that year. Anomalisa is no different and certain no anomaly in Kaufman’s collection of film.