Anomalisa (2015)

Charlie Kaufman's interest in puppetry has been established in his cinematic cannon as early as his first feature film Being John Malkovich back in 1999, which was both literally and figuratively about puppetry. So it shouldn't be much of a surprise that Kaufman chose to adapt his own 2005 play Anomalisa in a puppet type format, specifically stop motion animation of deliberately marionette type figures. Now given that the story is chiefly about a lonely man spending a night a Cincinnati hotel, this might seem like the type narrative that you would just film people acting, why would you even consider doing it some other way as a film. Well Kaufman has his reasons, and they make this film more effective then it would have been as standard indie fair.

First off there are only three voices in the film. David Thewlis as Michael Stone, an author and a customer-service expert in town to give a conference. Jennifer Jason Leigh a Lisa Hesselman, an insecure but sweet natured woman who has come to Cincinnati to hear Stones talk. Tom Noonan as literally everybody else. This voice casting serves as a device to highlight the perceived connection Michael finds he has with Lisa, she is literally different then everybody else in the world, she is an anomaly. Yet Kaufman finds a way to invert his own device, to trick us with it in a way that reveals Michael's true character and flip the narrative on us, or rather the way we perceive the narrative because it has all actually been in front of us the whole time. A neat trick, though you do have to go through puppet sex to get there. ***1/2