Happy Wednesday (again, for some of you — sorry, that is just the nature of me to let my adherence to pattern/routine eat me from the inside)!
Hitting that hay on Hump Day
Today from Toronto/my bed: I had an absolute blast watching the debauched Danish flick Another Round and then reviewing it for The Playlist. I think this is probably the new film I’m the most bummed not to have seen with a big theater crowd eating it up, and I hope to one day be able to see this at a boozy screening.
Now, a little bit of joy for you from an old story I found in a saved folder: The Wall Street Journal reported on how zookeepers are helping their animals adjust to having less human traffic flow. It’s every bit as ADORABLE as you’d think. (And at least for me, this story wasn’t paywalled!)
And, to take a hard swing in the opposite direction (sorry) … there are those who have bigger concerns than just not seeing a smiling human face, and for them, The New York Times has established The Neediest Cases Fund. In between all the times that they are Failing! and peddling Very Fake News! and being The Enemy Of The People!, of course. (Those things are not a full-time job, little-known fact.) This campaign is something they’ve been doing for over a century, and you can read more on their GoFundMe about the organizations that will benefit around the city and country. They also write about the cases on their website, should you be curious to learn even more.
Now, what you came for…
DAY 188: Anomalisa (available for free with ads on Pluto TV)
Dipping back into the Charlie Kaufman well again here (I can hear the groans of one reader already who texted me her displeasure with his new movie on Netflix, I’m Thinking of Ending Things). But if you’re someone who associates the filmmaker with elaborate surrealist worlds or quirky plot dynamics, then maybe you ought to check out his 2015 animated movie Anomalisa. It’s disarming in how simple and pure the idea at its core is, so much so that I watched it the first time in disbelief as I waited for a big twist to come. There’s just one at the core of its central conceit, but other than that, Kaufman mostly just leaves us to ponder the nature of emotional connection.
Most of the film’s complexity comes from the manipulation of the 3D-printed puppets, not from Kaufman’s script. Anomalisa, which Kaufman co-directed with Duke Johnson, tells a fairly conventional story of one man’s isolation and how an affectionate connection can melt the layers of ice around the heart. When stated as a logline like that, the premise sounds rather like a familiarly dull British dramedy. But Kaufman has a unique angle on it, one better left for each viewer to discover. Don’t read about it before, if at all possible.
Kaufman gradually reveals the central conceit that makes the film special, and then unleashes a tidal wave of sincerity and emotional honesty from lonely business lecturer Michael Stone (voice of David Thewlis) and Lisa Hesselman (voice of Jennifer Jason Leigh), the woman whose voice penetrates his soul. The rapport they share feels so authentic, which causes some intentional cognitive dissonance as their bodies are not human.
But once Kaufman comes out in the open with the train of thought powering Anomalisa, fans of his work may wonder where the twist comes into play. For a subversive writer who nearly always delights in blowing up storytelling conventions, such a straightforward story with just one major revelation of authorial intent seems strange. Perhaps knowledge of his prior scripts even serves an impediment to fully experiencing Anomalisa as viewers would otherwise have no reason to doubt its earnestness and purity.
The final product is truly sweet and fulfilling (though whether something this quaint really merited years of Kaufman’s attention is another subject altogether). It’s certainly odd and veers into territory that confronts the darkness of solitude and the light that can only be generated by finding your person. Anomalisa might not necessarily emerge from that tunnel in a conventionally satisfying way, but we’re still richer for having basked in that light all the same.
P.S. — Some of this recommendation comes from my review when Anomalisa played theaters (remember those?), but I also updated it with some thinking based on a recent rewatch that confirmed my suspicions about its seemingly deceptive simplicity and earnestness.
Be good to yourselves and to each other,
Marshall