Anomalisa and the truth of despair

Charlie Kaufman’s film exposes life’s disillusionments, all through the medium of puppets and the uncanny valley

By the time I heard about Charlie Kaufman’s 2015 directorial film Anomalisa, I considered myself a tried-and-true Kaufman-head.

The story of Anomalisa follows protagonist—deeply depressed Michael Stone—as he travels to Cincinnati to speak at a business conference on customer service. There, he reunites with an ex-flame named Bella, and meets and quickly falls in love with conference attendee Lisa.

Michael’s bleak take on life is portrayed in his struggle to connect to anyone — his wife and child, Bella, and Lisa — ultimately showing that his desire for love is futile.

Human automatons

Kaufman teamed up with stop-motion animator Duke Johnson (business partner to Community actor and animator Dino Stamatopoulos) to create this entirely stop-motion animated film. Kaufman made a very clear choice with the look and feel of the characters; human and puppet perfectly intertwined. This almost-humanness is known as the “uncanny valley”, or the eerie feeling when experiencing something that closely resembles (but doesn’t entirely look like) a human being.

Each character’s face is adorned with two lines next to the eyes and one line outlining the jaw to create the illusion of a mask — these characters are supposed to function as puppets.

Much like in Being John Malkovich, another Kaufman screenplay, the use of puppets serve as a way to analyze the human condition. In Malkovich, main character Craig uses John Malkovich as a human puppet, taking over his body and life in a way that serves Craig best.

In Anomalisa, these puppets create the visual equivalency of sameness, or of the human-as-machine.

We all have the same voice

The concept of sameness and banality is another big theme for Anomalisa. The film’s cast is comprised of only three actors- David Thewlis voices Michael, Jennifer Jason Leigh voices Lisa, and Tom Noonan plays exactly everybody else. That’s everyone from the cab driver, to Bella, to Lisa’s coworker Emily, even Michael’s child.

Even the hotel Michael stays at is called The Fregoli — Fregoli delusion is the actual psychological condition where one believes every person around them is in disguise.

In fact, not only does everyone’s voice sound the same, but their faces are identical as well. Both men and women don the same non-distinctive face; plain, unblemished, and right in the middle between masculine and feminine.

Michael’s face is special, since the story is told from his point of view. Lisa’s face is also strikingly individual, with a scar on the left side of her face and even red streaks in her hair.

Michael’s unfailing need to connect is represented by the way every character looks and sounds exactly the same. Regardless of gender, age, or relationship, Michael finds everyone achingly vapid. He is worn out from life.

The hope of being saved

This feeling culminates in a scene when Michael stares at his hotel room’s bathroom mirror and his face begins to warp. The glitches accelerate as he finally takes a hold of his face and removes the exterior—everything below his eyes comes off like a mask. Underneath, Michael finds his two eyes bulging, mixed with mechanical machinery and metals. He realizes he is actually a machine.

It’s this split second of a moment when Michael first hears Lisa’s voice — it breaks him from his trance as he exclaims, “Oh God, someone else”.

The first burst of fresh air and the promise of a savior energizes Michael to frantically rush outside of his hotel room in search for the magical voice.

After finding Lisa, the source of the one original voice, Michael quickly becomes infatuated. He yearns to learn about her; everything from the details of her day to her favorite songs and the meaning behind the scars on her face.

Lisa is equally as entranced by Michael — she had traveled to the business conference to watch him speak, and admits she hadn’t had a boyfriend in eight years.

The pair grow close: Michael lightheartedly nicknames Lisa “Anomalisa” for her self-description of being an anomaly.

Michael, too, finds her an anomaly — the one person in the world who broke through his feelings of despair.

The film also carries a side-theme about Japan; Michael visits an adult store where he buys an antique Japanese doll (puppet?) for his son. At the end of the film, Lisa discovers that the term “anomalisa” means “Goddess of Heaven” in Japanese.

And hope is again lost (or is it?)

As the sun breaks in the morning, Michael and Lisa sit down for breakfast. The two discuss plans to start a relationship–Michael to divorce his wife and Lisa to move to Los Angeles with him. It’s during this conversation that Michael hears Lisa’s voice in an entirely new light.

She mentions possibly visiting the Cincinnati Zoo together — something that the Tom Noonan-voiced cab driver suggests at the beginning of the film. At this, Lisa’s voice begins to merge with everyone else’s’, and Michael’s disillusionment begins to overwhelm him once again.

With the morning shedding new perspective on his night, Michael feels that hope of a new life drain entirely from him.

By the time Michael gives his presentation at the conference, he can barely hide his despair.

“I’ve lost my love. She’s an unmoored ship drifting off to sea. And I have no one to talk to. I have no one to talk to. I have no one to talk to,” Michael tells the bewildered audience. He continues, “I need tears to tear me in two and let this nightmare escape.”

Michael ultimately returns from his trip back to his family, and back to an unwelcome surprise party filled with same-voiced and same-faced people he can barely recognize.

He brings the Japanese doll back for his son and gazes upon it wistfully as it strangely begins to sing — a Japanese song in Lisa’s voice.

So what does it all mean?

In a final scene, Lisa drives back from the conference with Emily, and she writes a letter to Michael that we hear in her original voice.

As Lisa takes a brief glance at Emily in the drivers seat, we can see that Emily’s face has changed — it’s subtle, but Emily is now more feminine, pretty. She is unique outside the realm of Michael’s mind.

As much as Kaufman connects with the regret and longing in Michael’s story, the director still recognizes a world outside of his own. Lisa still has her own voice, Emily has her own face, and perhaps Michael’s wife, his child, and everybody at the surprise party does too.

It is only within Michael’s delusion, his “nightmare”, where he is unable to find the love to pull him out of it.