Anomolisa-Our Modern Tragedy

                               Anomolisa-Our Modern Tragedy

I have said for many years, that film represents our highest medium of consciousness and our greatest hope of evolution out of the dangerous precipice we are teetering on as modern, “civilized” human beings. The new film Anomolisa, by Charlie Kaufman, in my view, is a brilliant display of our tragic angst we are numbly living, as well as a way out.

Kaufman’s other films include; Being Johon Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).

If you haven’t seen Anomolisa, I suggest you go see it and come back and read this, otherwise I will utterly ruin it for you!

My take on the movie, is that it represents our modern day tragedy, living in our perpetual mid-life crisis mode, whether or not you’re middle aged. The movie shows how comfortable, affluent, smart, and secure we all are in all our techno- sophistication, and how utterly empty and miserable so many are in the midst of our opulence.

The protagonist Michael Stone, is the archetypal, frumpy, drinking, smoking, and ‘successful’ business executive on a road trip to Cincinnati, to give a lecture based on his best selling book about “great customer service.”

Just as he is a ‘successful’ businessman, author, husband, and father, he’s also a ‘functional’ alcoholic, smoker, crap eating, not exercising, and living close to a heart attack life style, robot, which is oxymoronic. That is to say, you should not be considered ‘functional’ or ‘successful’ if you’re doing those things, but in our oxymoronic society, you are seen as a rock star, and given all kinds of status and strokes. In fact, Michael Stone should have quotes around him ‘living’ and being ‘human,’ and one of Kaufman’s brilliant devices is that this character is an animated figure who seems hyper realistic in his artificiality.

Another brilliant device Kaufman uses, is to have all the characters in the movie (except one), have the same voice. The taxi driver, hotel clerks, bar tender, and women in the movie, have the same voice, with just minor inflections. This points to how homogeneously boring we are in our pluralistic, drone/clone modern age. Everyone is so busy having an opinion, expressing themselves, networking, being innovative and entrepreneurial, and rebelling, that we have lost ourselves and blended into a soup of sameness. Facebook and Twitter are supreme examples of people thinking they are making unique expressions and having their voice heard, but they are merely being mined and trolled by the corporations as potential marketing prey. It’s the same scenario from the movie Matrix of people living virtual lives, but really only being used for their energy like an every ready AA battery.

When Michael Stone arrives in Cincinnati, he is alone in his hotel room and faced with himself and his despair, so he calls up an old flame, and tries to reignite this relationship. This is an example of another running theme through the movie; how everyone’s looking to love and be loved. Michael walked out on the woman 11 years ago, and now he wants to get together with her to have a drink. You can imagine how this goes, Kaufman is brilliant in that he doesn’t let his plastic characters or the audience off the hook with the pain and suffering of this all too human and common scenario, he poignantly walks us through every detail of how utterly miserable and desperate our misplaced seeking of pseudo love is.

Another instance of misplaced love is when Michael gets called down to the hotel’s human service office where an adulating fan makes a pass at him, and Michael runs away in repulsion, only to act out his own desperate attempt to connect with someone by randomly knocking on hotel guest’s rooms.

He knocks on the door where 2 women, who also happen to have read Michael’s book, have come to Cincinnati for his lecture the following day. One of the women, named Lisa, actually has a voice of her own and Michael is immediately attracted to her. She is the only character in the movie that has her own unique voice. Michael gets caught in a classic Anima projection, whereby he is able to see his own feminine, soul/self fully in Lisa. He projects all his tenderness, wounding, and simple, innocent love onto her, because he cannot claim it for himself. He charms her and tells her she is unique, he tells her she is an anomaly among people, he calls her Anomolisa.

She is quite shy, simple, pure, and has a disfiguring scare on her face which she conceals with her hair. Michael loves everything about her, takes her to his room to have sex, and in the morning he announces he’s leaving his wife and son to be with Anomolisa. She is taken aback, but she is also desperate for love so she agrees.

You know where it goes from here, he starts noticing that she hits her teeth with her fork, and chews with her mouth open, he starts criticizing her and trying to control her. Kaufman encapsulates the story of 90% of relationships in a simple breakfast scene!

Michael goes on to deliver his speech, but he realizes in the midst that he is a complete hypocrite, that although he’s considered an expert on human service he doesn’t know the first thing about being human and treating someone else with genuine kindness and real love. He has just been going through the motions of living, but he is an empty, mechanical, and desperate figurine, pretending to live a human life.

He ends up returning to his wife and son, purely out of his default habits, not knowing anything else. He brings his son a mechanical Japanese sex toy robot that he bought in an adult toy store. He is oblivious to how inappropriate and potentially harmful this could be to his young son. This mechanical robot represents Michael, living shallow, with mechanized gears, and moving with predictable automation and soulless pretense.

Michael’s wife has orchestrated a surprise party for him, all his friends with plastic plated faces are there, drinking their cocktails, speaking with the same voice.