Anom­al­isa

Kurt Vonnegut’s 1963 nov­el ​‘Cat’s Cra­dle’ is about the fic­tion­al reli­gion of Bokon­ism. In it, he invent­ed a new vocab­u­lary for how we eval­u­ate oth­ers. The most pro­found thing you can say about a per­son is that they belong to your ​“karass”. This, Von­negut defines as ​“a net­work or group of peo­ple who are some­how affil­i­at­ed or linked spir­i­tu­al­ly.” Char­lie Kauf­man wrote Being John Malkovich and Adap­ta­tion, and direct­ed Synec­doche, New York, and I am a mem­ber of his karass.

We are linked by name and an inward nature, and there­fore I nat­u­ral­ly accept qual­i­ties in his lat­est film, Anom­al­isa, that might deter oth­ers. Since its pre­mière at the Tel­luride Film Fes­ti­val, the film’s gen­der pol­i­tics have been wide­ly dis­cussed. Yet there’s a nar­ra­tive that is dri­ven by a self-con­scious­ly wretched man which both eclipses and con­sumes this ele­ment of the film. The fact that the lead char­ac­ter can­not recog­nise the depth of oth­ers – women and men – is the whole melan­cholic point.

Michael Stone (David Thewlis) is the loneli­est of all of Char­lie Kaufman’s lone­ly men. White, mar­ried and joy­less, he has grey hair, mid­dle-aged spread and no clear rea­son for liv­ing. Well-mean­ing con­ver­sa­tion­al­ists only grate on his fraz­zled nerves. Thewlis’ raw Lan­cashire bark hints at the des­per­ate suf­fer­ing beneath his auto-polite­ness. Michael can’t com­mu­ni­cate with the peo­ple who pass through his life. Their inabil­i­ty to touch him and his inabil­i­ty to per­ceive them is telegraphed with a bold cast­ing choice that con­stant­ly rein­forces Michael’s plight while pow­er­ing a source of hilar­i­ty on a par with the ​‘Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich’ scene in 1999’s Being John Malkovich.

The world that Kauf­man has built with the invalu­able exper­tise of co-direc­tor and ani­ma­tion whiz, Duke John­son, is a new sub-genre: social real­ist stop-motion pup­petry. The cost­ly joke is that years of painstak­ing work has gone into cre­at­ing sets that are entire­ly banal. Rather than labour­ing in the name of fan­tas­ti­cal, stylised spec­ta­cle like many a proud aes­thete, their efforts focus on recre­at­ing the archi­tec­ture of every­day life – like a mini ver­sion of the play in Synec­doche, New York. Char­lie Kauf­man val­ues the inten­si­ty that comes from mir­ror­ing real­i­ty. Watch­ing Anom­al­isa is like watch­ing a mind try­ing to escape its own tedious cor­ri­dors, search­ing for the sweet release of a mean­ing­ful voice next door.

Michael is a guru. His book, ​‘How Can I Help You Help Them?’, has estab­lished him as a god of the cus­tomer ser­vice scene. He has flown to Cincin­nati to address dis­ci­ples. The arc is sim­ple. He meets a woman called Lisa (Jen­nifer Jason Leigh) and thinks that she has changed his life. She is a paragon of inse­cu­ri­ty over­whelmed by each drop of ten­der­ness. If his soul is trapped inside, hers spills out in tor­rents. Their liai­son is awk­ward, touch­ing and dri­ven by his per­sua­sive need­i­ness. Lisa sub­mits at every stage in a way that is not going to win Anom­al­isa any pro­gres­sive rep­re­sen­ta­tion awards, but still has the ring of truth. Some who have gone with­out inti­ma­cy for a long time are just glad to replen­ish their stocks.

Duke John­son is unlucky and lucky to co-direct on his debut fea­ture. He’s unlucky because the sto­ry is so patent­ly Kauf­man-esque (he orig­i­nal­ly wrote it as a play under the pen name Fran­cis Fre­joli) that the cred­it defaults to the more estab­lished artist. But he is lucky because Anom­al­isa is a hell of a call­ing card, show­ing he can deliv­er a nuanced ani­ma­tion and ful­fil an idio­syn­crat­ic vision. The most strik­ing aspect of the pup­pets are their more-human-than-human eyes made from a com­bi­na­tion of 3D print­ed iris­es, self-repair­ing sil­i­con and clear resin. ​“Sad­ness was a word we used a lot when talk­ing to every­body,” John­son has said. This is appar­ent every­where and par­tic­u­lar­ly in the lead­en move­ments of Michael who drags him­self onward like a man in dan­ger of crumpling.

Most of the dra­ma takes place in the sooth­ing but anony­mous Fre­joli hotel. A steady stream of absurd, per­cep­tive jokes evince Kaufman’s capac­i­ty to enter­tain even while dis­till­ing the essence of alien­ation and the chimeric releas­es that taunt its suf­fer­ers. He is a sad clown. His char­ac­ters are pup­pets for solip­sis­tic malaise. Yet he is pas­sion­ate about humour and the joke count is high.

From unsexy chat-up lines (“Would you like to get a drink, chat about phone sys­tem inno­va­tion?”) to run­ning gags best left unspoiled to the rel­ish with which the minu­ti­ae of hotel life is milked for frus­tra­tion, Anom­al­isa is as coloured by exter­nal detail as it is fuelled by inter­nal tor­ment. The com­plex­i­ty of the ideas at play is intox­i­cat­ing both emo­tion­al­ly and intel­lec­tu­al­ly. Kauf­man is ahead of his char­ac­ter in deliv­er­ing the anti­dote to self-absorp­tion: mean­ing­ful communication.