I’m not sure why master-of-oddness Charlie Kaufman’s astonishing 2015 film Anomalisa has been on my mind lately. I think some of it has to do with maddening discourse online of late about sex onscreen, how almost absent it’s been and how some people genuinely like it that way, as if every movie should be suitable for the entire family. So the fact that Anomalisa features one of the most authentically awkward sex scenes ever committed to film, and it’s fairly graphic, and that’s in an animated film that is most emphatically not for children, just tickles.
On the other hand, this is a movie that invites you to see, to really see, that too many of us are sleepwalking through life, without even realizing it, and that’s something I am making a conscious effort not to do, especially now that between pandemic and climate disaster, we — the collective we — simply cannot afford to do that anymore.
Anyway, I plan to revisit this perception-altering-experience of a movie soon. I suspect it may have new relevance almost a decade on. (Read my 2015 review.)
US: stream on Kanopy; rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
UK: rent on Curzon Home Cinema; rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
See Anomalisa at Letterboxd for more viewing options.
