Anomalisa

Went to see anomalisa at Hyde park, Adam got free tickets from this quiz about sustainability we went to so he can mingle with the union and become president. Turns out just us and one other girl showed up so we did a casual version of the quiz and won the tickets.

So the movie. Charlie Kauffman and duke Johnson working in mesmerising stop motion to tell the introverted story of mentally unstable narcissistic guru of customer services Michael Stone taking an inane business trip that ends up pushing him over the edge.

I enjoyed it a lot. It was horribly unpleasant to watch for the most part, which is quite a feat to acheive. The main reason for this is that everyone except Michael has the same crash text dummy face and the same unsettlingly neutral voice. This is his disorder, called fregoli, where one perceives everyone in the world to be the same person. Pretty freaky stuff. So obviously he's pretty miserable and completely isolated in this perceived world of empty clones and this gives him a lot of desperation and intensity. Quite an unlikable guy really, and i do love an unlikeable protaganist. 

There's an unsettling level of intimacy throughout the whole thing right from the benginning when Michael shuffles restlessly around his hotel room drinking chain smoking and practising embarrasingly what to say to a woman he abandoned ten years ago. This continues as we watch him stammer destructively through drinks with said woman, who he clearly destroyed. Here one begins to feel less sympathetic and more guilty as if he reflects the worst case scenario in all of our characters. I mean maybe if I started seeing everyone I loved as a vapid replica of everyone I hated with no ability to differentiate between them, maybe I'd end up abandonning and ignoring said people with little care for the consequences. It's not like he can even hear the sadness in their voices.

I'll note at this point that one of my favourite bits was when he turned the big tv on, I think it's meant to be early 2000's but it makes that static fizz noise that id forgotten about. What attention to detail and faith to the time frame does that demonstrate on the part of the sound people. Greatttt stuff.

So then he hears this voice, and we hear it like he does cos we also have been heading incessant Tom Noonan. It's a happy lady voice and he's like woaaaah who is this and goes crazy knocking doors to find her and he does and she looks different too and he's slated. They go for drinks with her friend, they've come to see the seminar on customer service he's giving and are kinda can girls. Emily, the friend, we're told repeatedly is more attractive and popular with men, but since we see her as another androgynous crash dummy we, like Michael, dismiss her in favour of Lisa and her proper human face. 

Then after awkward drinks he takes her back to his room and pursues her despite initial her reluctance. He gets her to sing for him, I guess singers probably all have that same voice, so thats a nice little moment. Then begins the most excruciating sex scene in the history of film, television, or really any visual media, to my knowledge. I'm uncomfortable jsut remembering it, it really must be seen to be believed, and I'm certain I will never forget the experience of watching two soft puppets have hyper-realistic, unnappealing and unglamouros intercourse on a cinema screen with a room full of equally baffled strangers. 

So then (spoilers), after they've had horrid sex, I forget what happens, but in the morning theyre eating breakfast and Michael is like MARRY ME LISA BALLS TO MY FAMILY I HATE THEM INCLUDING MY SON HES A DICK LETS ELOPE NOW, and the beat after she agrees he starts getting pissed that she's got egg on her mouth and clacks her fork on her teeth and tells her off and then her voice, subtley at first but increasingly clearly starts to have echos of the voice. We feel his desperate and gutting frustration as the only joy he'd found in life slips away and she becomes another one, like the rest of them.
After this he finally goes to do the conference in the midst of which he has an excellent mental breakdown and starts swearing about the futility of existence in front of a crowd of fans. Then he goes home to his family and says he doesn't recognise them and then gives his son the weird japanese sex doll that we saw earlier, but I agree with mark kermode on this that the sex toy joke thing kinda brought the whole thing down a notch as if it was just there to engage the people who weren't enjoying the grinding existentialism.

Animation-wise its a visual masterpiece. Every detail, every prop, is faultless and seamless, the more you think about it as you look it at the more boggling it is. The figures are perfect too, comletely captured the essence of neutral, like they are the most neural faces possible.

Anyway this has become very long, basically I enjoyed the movie and I would watch it again, perhaps out of pure morbid fascination.