Together In Isolation: How Anomalisa Articulates Loneliness

By Bill Rockas

The Oscar-nominated animated film Anomalisa (Kaufman 2015) is an exploration of loneliness and the age-old question of whether we see things as they are or only as we are. Using stop-motion animation, 3-D printing technology, and a single voice actor for the majority of the roles, director and writer Charlie Kaufman creates the headspace of lonely, self-centered protagonist Michael Stone (David Thewlis). Michael views everyone other than himself as a version of the same person, all with the same face and identical monotonous voice. Kaufman crafted the characters’ identical faces with 3D printing and distinguished them only with different hair and clothing. Using visual and auditory representations that are only possible through the art of animation, the film portrays a world that looks very real, and yet slightly off because we experience it through the cold-hearted and bitter vantage point of a man who has reduced the human experience to obligatory and predictable exchanges. Anomalisa’s clever aesthetic choices demonstrate that we see the world through our own limitations and biases. It illustrates that if isolation is merely a scarcity of social interactions, loneliness is a chronic state of self-absorption that disables a person from creating new emotional bonds. Anomalisa expertly channels its aesthetics to explore misanthropy and human weakness for all its nuanced, ugly, and unsettling truths.

In the film, Michael, who is a motivational speaker, travels to Ohio to promote his latest book at a convention. He sees the trip as an opportunity to find someone more interesting and invigorating than his wife and child. During his first night at the hotel, he attempts to seduce an old girlfriend, Bella (Tom Noonan), whom he abandoned without explanation years prior. Frustrated by his failed attempt with Bella, he gets drunk and purchases a Japanese sex doll with a cracked face. The next day he meets Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a shy woman who is awed by Michael’s presence. She, unlike everyone else in his world, has a unique face and voice. Michael becomes infatuated with her scarred face, her distinct voice, and her reverence towards him. He nicknames her “Anomalisa,” as she is an anomaly in his world. After their one night stand, where Lisa mentions her obvious ability to speak Japanese, Michael proposes that they get married and run away together. Lisa agrees to this fantastical plan. Yet moments later while eating breakfast, Michael finds himself annoyed by her eating habits. With this slight irritation, Lisa’s voice and face begin to transform into those of everyone else in Michael’s world. Michael then returns home to his family with the Japanese sex doll in tow. The end of the film sees Lisa writing a letter to Michael saying she hopes to meet again and Michael then sees another woman, Emily, appear in the last shot with her own unique face. 

By utilizing the same voice and faces for everyone who does not pique Michael’s interest, the film focuses solely on Michael’s bleak perception of reality and loss of his humanity. Every character, including Michael, possesses a horizontal seam that stretches around their head, representing their identity. Lisa is the only character in the film with a scar at her seam. She attempts to brush her hair over to obstruct it but Michael parts her hair, claiming that her scar is beautiful. In this instance, he comes to understand beauty as a truthful reflection of one’s individuality. However, this may only be more of Michael’s self delusion as he is infatuated with Lisa due to his fetishization of her differences. It is almost a self congratulatory rush of dopamine when Michael believes he is seeing beyond himself. Michael’s self-absorption is also shown through his own seam. In one dream sequence, he falls apart at the seam and the bottom half of his face falls off his head. As he scrambles to repair himself, the serial number for the stop-motion doll is displayed in full view. The extent of Michael’s superficial perspective breaches the fourth wall, providing a startling glance at how unremarkable he is. Michael’s self-absorption is bound both by his inflated ego and his self-consciousness. He fears that there is nothing diverse or meaningful in his head and that someone will realize how vapid and dull he truly is. Both of these contradictory states, self-aggrandizing and self-loathing, condemn Michael to his life of unsatisfactory connections. 

The extent of Kaufman’s clever use of visual motifs reveals itself to the viewers as the story unfolds. The animated aesthetic helps the audience disassociate with the characters, thus flattening the value of other characters and allowing the focus to be on Michael’s perceptions of his world. Only when Lisa enters with her unique face and voice does the world make sense to Michael and to the audience. Lisa is consistent and modest, bolstering the message that love is clarity. However, the motif only develops into its true meaning when Michael is disgusted by Lisa; in Michael’s eyes, as she loses the grace of perfection she transforms into the template for all other characters. Kaufman’s message of seeing the world only as we are and not as others truly are is spotlighted. Just as the spell of Lisa’s perfection is broken by bad table manners, Michael loses sympathy from the audience by shifting the story from a tale of romance to an exploration on how narcissism repels connection. 

Kaufman also suggests that the audience itself may not be perceiving the story correctly through the chosen aesthetics. Michael’s hotel is titled “The Fregoli” which is a reference to Fregoli syndrome, a rare mental disorder in which the afflicted believes everyone in their life to be the same person. The choice to include this detail hints that Michael may actually be unique as his perception is limited by an actual disorder. Kaufman adds in layers to challenge the audience’s perception of the narrative and visuals. The question of true reality extends to the issue of whether Lisa is a real person or the fantasy Michael created with his Japanese sex doll. Lisa has a scar at her seam similar to that of the cracks in the doll’s face. She states that she “obviously speaks Japanese” though there is no reason this should be obvious. The two also sing for Michael in distinct voices. Michael coaxes Lisa into serenading him with Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and at the conclusion of the movie, Michael’s sex doll sings “Momotarō's Song.” This interpretation of the story explains why Michael fails to have a complete character arc. The doll helped him to ignore the imperfections of others as it only serviced his needs. Therefore, the doll could be viewed in whatever context suited him best. The film could also be interpreted as Lisa’s journey through the eyes of a side character. The title features her name prominently, she is the only one to undergo a positive character arc, and the final shot of the movie shows the world through her eyes. This enhances Michael’s self-importance for the viewer as he is integral to the viewing but not the story. Michael does little of consequence with the audience’s investment. He trudges through a slow malaise of scenes that fail to teach him anything. In this way, the film distorts the viewer’s perception of relevance by supplicating the story of Lisa’s evolution with a story of fatalism. 

Anomalisa’s disturbingly honest portrayal of loneliness, monotony, and the loss of human connection suffers from the fact that the subject matter is depressing and the character arc does not result in a transformation of who we believe is the protagonist. The film’s clues that Michael may suffer from Fregoli syndrome are questionable. Though he is never diagnosed and the condition is meant to serve a larger metaphor, implicating a mental disorder is both problematic and undermines the universal quality of the story. To understand the Fregoli reference disengages the viewer because they see Michael as a case study rather than a human being struggling with the conventions of loneliness. Fregoli syndrome is the result of “impaired connectivity between the right fusiform and right parahippocampal areas,” implying that most patients also suffer from “deficits in visual memory recall, face recognition, and identification processes in these patients” (Hudson and Grace). Kaufman’s reference could be coloring in the details of Michael’s life or the portrayal is incredibly simplistic. In any case, it robs him of relatability and potentially suggests a problematic ambiguity in representing people with mental disorders. 

Anomalisa is a story that could only be told through animation. Through the art of illusion and perception, the film embraces intimate human emotions and expectations, thus distilling ineffable concepts into one accessible piece. Though nominated for Best Animated Film by the Motion Picture Academy, the film lost to the far more relatable Inside Out (Docter, 2015). Interestingly, both films explore issues of mental health through the medium of animation. However, Anomalisa’s adult oriented portrayal of human perception and misconception is far more reliant on its clever aesthetic choices than the colorful and child-friendly Inside Out. Anomolisa exploits every motif that could be dismissed as purely stylistic or extraneously surreal and capitalizes on its economical use of visual metaphors to tell a story where the aesthetic choices are quintessential to the meaning. 

Works Cited

A. J. Hudson and G. M. Grace, “Misidentification syndromes related to face specific area in the fusiform 

gyrus,” Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, vol. 69, no. 5, pp. 645–648, 2000. 

Anomalisa, directed by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, performances by David Thewlis and 

Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paramount Pictures, 2015.