Film Review: ‘Anomalisa’ features Noonan in multiple roles
About 10 years ago, Charlie Kaufman — screenwriter of “Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation.,” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” — duped me. His “sound play” — kind of like a radio play — “Hope Leaves the Theater” was being presented at UCLA, giving me an excuse to interview him.
In earlier performances on the East Coast, “Hope” had been paired with a work in the same mode by the Coen brothers. For one reason or another, the latter was replaced at UCLA with something called “Anomalisa” by Francis Fregoli.
When I asked for info about the unknown Fregoli, Kaufman deflected the question, merely saying that Fregoli was an up-and-comer. Only later was it revealed that Fregoli wasn’t merely unknown; he was also nonexistent — a pseudonym for Kaufman himself.
But in the meanwhile I had dutifully reported Kaufman’s words about the mystery playwright. Curse my credulity! I should have spotted the deception; after all, “Adaptation.” was supposed to have been cowritten by Kaufman and his imaginary twin brother Donald, a ruse that had been maintained into the real world.
Now “Anomalisa” is a film, codirected by Kaufman and animator Duke Johnson (who appears to be an actual human being). The stop-motion style is realistic enough to be unsettling.
Furthermore, it’s easy to be misled at first: all the characters except the two leads are voiced by one actor, Tom Noonan, who has specialized in creepy characters for three decades. (An irrelevant, but interesting, factoid: Dr. Ben Carson was Noonan’s roommate at Yale.)
So, when the protagonist is on the phone to his wife, she sounds like a man. It briefly seems like some kind of transgender thing will be part of the story. But, no.
Our hero is Michael Stone (David Thewlis), a motivational speaker who opines about how service industry workers can supercharge their performance. His book, “How May I Help You Help Them?”, is apparently revered...at least by service industry employees.
He flies into Cincinnati one evening to give a speech the following day. Despite his success, he’s clearly unhappy, maybe longterm depressed. He checks into the Fregoli Hotel, has an unsatisfying phone conversation with his wife and child; he looks up an ex-girlfriend, hoping to reignite their sexual passion. He goes to an all-night toy store to get a present for his son, only to discover it’s a sex-toy store.
Worst of all, he’s hounded by people talking, all with Tom Noonan’s voice.
We realize that Noonan’s multiple casting isn’t just a cute trick. It’s how Michael hears the world. (This is a good place to mention that there is a psychological disorder called Fregoli’s Delusion, whose sufferers believe that various people are all the same person in disguise. And that person is persecuting them.)
But, getting out of the shower, Michael hears a voice in the corridor — a voice that isn’t Tom Noonan. “It’s another person!” he exclaims.
That person turns out to be Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a customer service rep, who’s in town for his lecture. Lisa has world-class self-image issues: she insists she’s not smart, not pretty, and not interesting. She has some scar or physical flaw, though we never see it. Michael is naturally completely smitten. But how far can this sudden tender relationship go?
Lisa’s awkwardness and self-deprecation could be annoying, but Leigh makes her winsomely appealing. (She’s basically the opposite of the savage character Leigh plays in “The Hateful Eight.”)
Kaufman’s scripts are usually complicated and stuffed with layers. His one previous directorial effort, “Synechdoche, New York,” made his earlier works look straightforward. It was utterly brilliant but also utterly disorienting. By the end, the lead character’s identity has crumbled; he’s unmoored in a world with nothing clear to hang on to.
“Anomalisa” is by far the least convoluted thing Kaufman has written. Despite its oddities — the animation and the multiple Noonans, for instance — it is more compact (Kaufman’s shortest), transpiring within 24 hours. By Kaufman’s standards, it’s almost normal.
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ANDY KLEIN is the film critic for Marquee. He can also be heard on “FilmWeek” on KPCC-FM (89.3).