Anomalisa and the wonders of stop-motion
- Francesca Laura Cersosimo
- 21 mar 2016
- Tempo di lettura: 2 min
Michael Stone is the author of a successful self-help book, spending one night in Cincinnati to give a speech at a conference. He is alone and frustrated, since, to him, everybody looks the same and sounds the same. Until he meets someone who is different, an anomaly to the rest of the world: Lisa.
Because of the stop-motion technique chosen by the two directors, Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, the production process was very long, but the result is unique. Puppet's expressions and movements are incredibly realistic: not even the visible junction on their face – allowing them to have different expressions – is able to stop our empathy.
Close-up on Michael - © 2015 Paramount Pictures
About this, Charlie Kaufman says in a Rollingstone interview: "When everything is evened out and smoothed out, it becomes somewhat soulless. We found over time that the quality of keeping it handmade created a kind of vulnerability and soulfulness" (Rolling Stone article): the puppets are imperfect, flawed just as humans are.
Set in the dilated extent of a night, in a fancy but anonymous hotel, as all hotels are, Anomalisa deals with the ussue of identity, not only on an exsistential level (as in Being John Malkovich), but also on a metafilmic level, since several sequences deliberately draw our attention on fiction (in particular, the one of Michael's deam).
There are only three actors voicing all the characters in this film. David Thewlis, Michael's voice, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Lisa's, and Tom Noonan, who voices everybody else. And this is not distracting or annoying, but intense, as it mirrors Michael's perception of reality and his profound isolation before meeting Lisa.
Michael and Lisa - © 2015 Paramount Pictures
There is nothing conventional in this movie, not even romance. Unexpected and captivating, Michael's entounter with Lisa provides the possibility to explore human relationships in a new and different way. And it does it thoroughly, with a sex scene that caused Anomalisa to be the first animated Oscar nominee forbidden to under 18. Despite this is what the majority of the Internet picked up, in Anomalisa, love is portrayed in a vivid, original way. Dialogues follow their own rythm and they are unpredictable and true to life, as the one that takes place between Michael and Lisa, when Lisa starts singing "Girls just wanna have fun" by Cindy Lauper.
Michael and Lisa - © 2015 Paramount Pictures
Directors: Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson Writers: Charlie Kaufman Cast: David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan Year: 2015
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