Anticipating Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT6QJaS2a-U

Honestly I didn't love Synecdoche, New York. This one looks like it could be great.

intriguing

I'll see it cuz he's great. I am a little perplexed as to why this was made in stop motion. The trailer looks like its of a piece with Synechdoche, which I loved the first time I saw it in the theater but have cooled to over time - when I watched it a second time it felt like 2/3rds of a pretty ingenious, affecting movie and then the other 1/3rd felt really perfunctory/repetetive

Signifies lack of agency, I guess...

It looks like something from CBBC, truly fucking awful trite shit, yuck!

I kinda wish him and/or Jonze + Gondry would get together again, they all moderate the others' worst tendencies

So far the consensus is pretty good! http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/anomalisa/

has armond white weighed in yet

If you want a REAL movie about the loss of sense-of-self, try Hotel Transylvania 2!

I actually think they're all pretty good individually but I do agree that their collaborative work is probably their best stuff.

Synecdoche is maybe my fave of the aughts so I'm stoked for this obviously

still flabbergasted that FX passed on his series - it must have been really out there.

There's little sense in criticizing trailers, but the music seemed like easily the most evocative thing in it and the spoken words the least evocative. Also, the animated figures had very limited facial expression and they certainly aren't going to get any more expressive in the full length movie version. They blink well, though.

Did it occur to you that that may be the intention? I'm sure if Kaufman had wanted to he could have made the film with actors which probably would have been a hell of a lot cheaper. I've not seen it obviously but neither have you and maybe that disconnect is what the film's about. Seems pretty likely based in the trailer.

I mean, I'm getting flashbacks to your posts about Linklater's Boyhood where you similarly criticised a core artistic decision based on a trailer and based on how you think things could be done more conventionally (in movie terms) and missing the point that the movie wouldn't exist without that film-maker's generating artistic principle.

This looks like it fucking blows.

Fuck Charlie Kaufman and his thin Movies About Ideas, so tired of this middlebrow shit

Did it occur to you that that may be the intention?

Well, duh. There's nothing in a movie that wasn't the result of someone's judgment that it ought to be there. Did it occur to you that I might know that?

You have my sympathy on those flashbacks. They can be nasty.

No, there are plenty of things in many movies that become manifest outside of the intentions or judgements of those involved. Your sympathy is appreciated with regard to your Boyhood posts though.

there are plenty of things in many movies that become manifest outside of the intentions or judgements of those involved.

I was thinking more in terms of production design, set design, lighting design, costumes, scripting, camera angles, sound design, casting, the particular takes chosen by the director and the editor, frame by frame. You know, stuff like that. Not so much the opinions of this or that group of audience members on what a film 'said', because, you know, audience opinions tend to be all over the map. I even recall some radical disagreements among those ilxors who watched Boyhood.

Cool. Sorry for being a bit of a dick there.

No problem. May Anomalisa be everything you hope it will be.

I think this looks like a very neat idea, and I like the blandness of the puppetry. I find it bemusing the rating mentions "nudity" though. Is it strictly nudity when theres no humans in it?

A technically impeccable work of sour misanthropy.

(Eric, it appears i am on the same page with my ex-ed)

It looks like the kind of film that, if you saw it on a date, afterwards there would be a mutual feeling of "welp, guess we're not fucking tonight."

unless one of you is 'disfigured.'

So much simpler than Synecdoche, New York. Makes sense that it was expanded from a short film. A nice little thing this is, and I'm really happy Kaufman is getting the acclaim and attention he deserves, but I want to see him do more mindfuck masterpieces. I hope I don't have to wait seven years for the next one.

It was a radio play, not a short film.

I was referring to the Kickstarter proposal - they were raising money for a 40-minute short film based on an already written script, which Kaufman expanded once they got more money.

ah

they actually performed that 'radio play' on a stage in LA

CK talks puppet fuckin'

http://www.vice.com/read/talking-anomalisa-animation-and-puppet-sex-with-charlie-kaufman

Yeah, I heard the original Kaufman / Coens double bill from New York back around 2006. There was some weird coding or glitch in the mp3 that made one of them keep looping iirc.

Really enjoyed this. The animation was amazing, and the set design was gorgeous. The plot/dialog wasn't as gonzo or interesting as some of his other work, but I was ok with that.

Yeah. I thought it wouldn't stick with me very long, but the animation really has. Still bummed the story was so simple compared to Kaufman's previous work.

I found this about 1/20th as effective as Synecdoche, great puppet sex tho

Wow, this was incredible. The most realistic sex scene I've ever seen too (even if it was two puppets)

As I'm sure someone has pointed out by now, you need some form of animation to get away with that detailed a sex sequence without getting slapped with an NC-17 / "unrated" situation.

i saw this last night and hm

the sex scene was great, tom noonan was great as literally every character, and i can't help but feel that i spent 90 minutes with a complete asshole

cogently put and i'm feeling you.

Awful. Place it in the same category as Her. Slightly older version of Garden State with some weak ~conceptual~ shit trying to boost it up.

ran this twice yesterday: didn't give a shit about the guy despite knowing how he feels (guess that's how solipsism works) but appreciated the cyndi lauper scene, the part where jennifer jason leigh's more confident and flirtatious friend nevertheless has the nullifying tom noonan voice, the merciless ending, and the running time. i delight-laughed at the puppets-and-noonan my man godfrey, but i was the only one. a projectionist's joke.

i kept thinking of bellow's "what kind of day did you have", a story that's infinitely more attentive to the internal life of the awestruck mistress and yet still doesn't completely avoid the bathos and self-fascination you eventually get pretty sick of in the work of the whole mid-20c crop of literate adulterers. this movie felt steeped in that -- tho asking it to be more attentive to the internal lives of non-protagonists is p much asking it not to exist.

^^otm, this DFW quote from another thread reminded me of this movie:

Updike (...) makes it plain that he views the narrator’s impotence as catastrophic, as the ultimate symbol of death itself, and he clearly wants us to mourn it as much as Turnbull does. I’m not especially offended by this attitude; I mostly just don’t get it. Erect or flaccid, Ben Turnbull’s unhappiness is obvious right from the book’s first page. But it never once occurs to him that the reason he’s so unhappy is that he’s an asshole.
― Acting Crazy (Instrumental) (jed_), Friday, August 14, 2015 9:45 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah it was definitely hard to sympathize with him. it would have been more interesting if instead of it being a labored metaphor, his character actually did have agnosia or something.

i don't think we're meant to sympathize with the narrator but it just makes the movie kinda supremely unpleasant, which i'm guessing was the goal. it's really lingered with me though, for what it's worth

yeah, tbf, the movie is not in the same perplexity dfw's talking about there (tho i was prob thinking of that review w my "mid-20c crop"; he calls them "Great Male Narcissists" iirc) -- it's explicit that the protag's affliction is his own and will not be dreamgirled away. and the movie's very awareness of his responsibility means that its big tragic climax -- breakfast -- is, inevitably, also the moment at which you're most inclined to be like OH FUCK YOU. so yeah, a genuinely "difficult" movie, for most, probably.

"responsibility" not necc the right word -- just that the disease is clearly not everybody else's.

yeah, driven 100% home by the JJL's blond friend having a different face in the last shot. At least I think that's the case; it's possible my memory is tricking me there.

Anyway, I'm with the other posters above. I know we're not supposed to sympathize with the character, but I also didn't find anything particularly compelling about the whole thing. Obviously the aesthetic choices are pretty audacious and the underlying concept intriguing at first...but beyond that it didn't feel like there was anything of interest. Which is very much unlike Kaufman's usual high concept stuff!

to the film's credit lisa is a very, very real person (and the most compelling part of the movie) and from the jump you can tell the dude is projecting his bullshit onto her, when her voice recedes into the neutral noonan frequency it is heartbreaking bc she is still the same really sweet, compelling person and the dude is an awful manchild who does not know what he wants.

i really wanted to love this but it seems like the weakest thing kaufman has written. very much of a piece with her in terms of an interesting concept but not really fleshed out enough. (also reminded me of locke, in terms of a movie about a guy having some sort of crisis, though that did it a lot better). kaufman mega fans will prob be better placed to appreciate it, but this just felt like something that should have been a short. some lovely little moments, but as a character, the main guy seemed barely explored. narrative-wise, it seemed clunkily episodic. there was a nice atmosphere of melancholy, which lingered with me, but i didnt have much else to hang onto. it seemed to really be trying hard to present something deeper and more profound but didnt have the storytelling chops to pull it off - the main thing i kept thinking was that kaufman is maybe just not served by trying to tell a straightforward story - he should stick with meta.

the whole premise of him being autistic (if i understood that right?) didnt seem to be clear. i also didnt totally get what making it with stop motion animation really did for the story, as they didnt seem quite artificial enough. i kept thinking jan svankmajer or even tim burton might have done something more interesting with it visually. then again, without it, this would just be another so-so american indie bout awkwardness, so maybe that was a smart move.

Not heard anything about autism before and didn't think that when watching.

Most heartbreaking Cyndi Lauper cover ever.

Phooey. I'm with Morbs on this.

Lisa's character doesn't ring as totally true to me. Kaufman presents her as overly insecure, with the exception of her amazing singing. Even broken people can navigate their own strengths, she just seems a little one-dimensional. Which is sad, because she's also the best thing about this film IMO.

so depressing to see such interesting and effective technique expended on something as dull and over-done and mundane as the White Male Midlife Crisis yet fucking again. I think I really despise Charlie Kaufman. depressing that critics lap this shit up too. Michael's ex who stormed out and told him to fuck off after 5 minutes otm.

Michael is a dickhead whose problems are excruciatingly boring and Lisa is just a projection of someone to save from herself, the character rang so false, all that caricatured insecurity

oh i guess i've just known ppl like lisa in my life. i agree she's thinly drawn bc this movie is v focused on michael and boy does michael suck

the insecurities didn't ring false, laying them on so thick did. the character existed purely to be nobly "saved"

ok yeah agreed there

Yeah, I agree with you Lex.