Anomalisa (2015, dir. Duke Johnson, Charlie Kaufman)

The goal of great animated films is to go where you can’t go with reality-based, live action, fictional cinema.  Most animated films thus transport the viewer to fantastical locales or create characters that have qualities that you couldn’t find in your typical actor and character.  This can be found in Disney’s preoccupation with animal characters with human qualities.
 
Anomalisa, as an animated picture, doesn’t take you to unimagined worlds or depict action that is unrepresentable in live action.  In fact, the film’s depiction of its world and characters is fairly conventional and could even be considered realizable if it were a live action movie.  What it does do that only an animated film could have done, however, is delve into psychological depths and personality environments that could only be accomplished through its own medium. 

This is an animated film that is definitely not for kids.  It contains sex and swearing.  Interestingly, only three voice-actors are used, although there are several more characters than that.  The reason for this is that the main protagonist, Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis) only has ever heard one voice in everyone he meets or knows (everyone else is voiced by Tom Noonan).  This includes his wife and son.  However, one day he hears a new voice.  Lisa (voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh) is unique in this way and he thus immediately is attracted to her.  The focus of the film is on their brief relationship and on themes of loneliness and conformity. 

The film is enjoyable and funny at times.  Perhaps the reason that Tom Noonan voices all the other characters is because writer Charlie Kaufman wanted to stress the mind-numbing uniformity of modern day existence and to express the idea that someone unique and right for us can come along when we least expect it.  At the same time, in showing Lisa’s voice at one point slowly starting to change into that of Noonan’s, Kaufman is showing how our initial joy in finding what appears to be love is often dispelled and demystified as we grow acquainted with the object of our desire.