Alone with “Anomalisa”

By Tom Graham

The final, lone word uttered in Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut, “Synecdoche, New York”, is “die”, a terse stage direction as the screen fades to grey. He has been ominously quiet ever since. There were suggestions that Kaufman, the mind behind “Adaptation” and “Being John Malkovich”, was an ingenious writer, but no director. Now, seven years later, he has finally returned with his existential, stop-motion film “Anomalisa”.

It follows Michael Stone, a quietly depressed motivational speaker who has written a bestseller on customer service and is flying to Cincinnati for a conference. He lands and goes to the hotel, where he gradually unravels the night before his keynote speech. His journey from plane to podium is punctuated by a production line of chattering faces: a cab driver, a hotel clerk, a valet, a waitress. Everyone looks the same – even Michael’s wife and son. Their size and hairstyles change, but their faces remain identical: smooth and blank. The same actor, Tom Noonan, voices all of the characters. His distinctly normal voice varies in pitch but is always recognisably the same. This is what Michael fears: that everyone else, fundamentally, is the same; that he is alone.