In Anomalisa’s stop-motion world all men and women have the same face and voice and behave like marionettes. One woman is an anomaly (voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh) and attracts the attention of famous customer service guru Michael Stone (David Thewlis) who is schlepping himself around yet another business hotel, depressed. The fabulously detailed Anomalisa is a great example of animation’s potential. In Venice the film won the Grand Jury Prize and the film is nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film. Co-director and scriptwriter Charlie Kaufman based the scenario for the partially Kickstarter-crowdfunded film on his own, eponymous play.
The constructed appearance of the stop-motion animation is neatly aligned with Kaufman’s always fantastic, comedic and sometimes deeply sad quests for his worlds’ hidden mechanisms as evinced by Synecdoche, New York (2008) and his scripts for Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004).
Film details
- Country of production
- USA
- Year
- 2015
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2016
- Length
- 90'
- Medium/Format
- DCP
