Review: Anomalisa (2015)

* * * 1/2
Director: Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson
Starring: David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan

I suppose it isn't saying much to say that Anomalisa is the most straightforward movie to come from writer/director Charlie Kaufman. Known for his brilliantly bizarre, mind-bending works, Kaufman doesn't typically deal in simple premises or simple execution. Anomalisa does not tell a complicated story that necessitates folding the narrative around itself or finding a way to demonstrate multiple levels of consciousness meeting each other and coming into conflict; it's the uncomplicated story of a man battling loneliness and depression who comes to believe that he's been saved from what ails him by a chance encounter. It's totals at a brisk 90 minutes, as it likely must, having been created with puppets and stop-motion animation. It's animated, but definitely not for kids, featuring as it does some very adult themes and a puppet sex scene which, even if you know it's going to happen, may still shock you with how explicit and bracingly realistic it is.

21st Century Essentials: Synecdoche, New York (2008)

All eras have works of art that are fundamental to our understanding of not only the craft itself, but the culture from which it was created. The 21st century is still nascent, but it isn't too early to start creating a canon that demonstrates the heights to which film as an artform has reached since the year 2000. These are the essential films:


Director: Charlie Kaufman
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Dianne Wiest, Catherine Keener, Emily Watson
Country: USA

Worlds within worlds within worlds. A life is comprised not just of experiences, but of how the mind filters, understands, organizes and relates those experiences. Because of that, a life cannot be understood in simple terms; an event is not just an event, but something defined by multiple layers of meaning, some of which remain hidden. Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut Synecdoche, New York is a film of almost unfathomable ambition, one rich with ideas about the relationship between the mind and reality, which starts as a story of the interior and then just keeps burrowing deeper and deeper until finally turning itself inside out. It’s a film which demands multiple viewings and which can, perhaps, never be fully unpacked – but it’s well worth a try.