Promiscuous puppetry: the only stop-motion movie to feature a sex scene
While we may collectively associate Charlie Kaufman with his screenwriting abilities and as the mastermind behind The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, he has also directed his own slate of projects.
Similarly to his screenplays, his films are known for their existentialist concepts, surrealistic dream worlds, and emphasis on the absurdism of mundanity. They feel vaguely similar to our own lives but distinctly separate, existing in their own plain of reality. But there is one of his films that I think highlights this the most, which Kaufman chooses to orchestrate through the painful awkwardness of puppets.
Anomalisa, released in 2015, follows a man called Michael who finds his life reinvigorated by a woman he meets while staying in a hotel for a work trip. The lead character is voiced by the brilliant David Thewlis, bringing this pitiful character to life as he attempts to derive meaning from something that doesn’t really exist in order to avoid his own lack of fulfilment and depression. It shows Michael as he reckons with his failures and mediocrity, clinging onto anything that will give him a bit of hope or attention and negate the fact that he has lived an average life.
But what makes this film stand out is the disorientating stop-motion style, with each character being played by a clunky puppet, exaggerating the lack of agency and control that David feels over his life. He doesn’t feel as if he has true autonomy over his life, he is being pulled by the strings of some higher power that dictate each and every decision. He sees the emptiness of his life as being a result of this feeling, of not feeling like he can make a change, flung from place to place without acknowledging the root of the problem.
However, there is one element in the film that is even more discombobulating than the pale puppets or aggressive color palette, which is the stop-motion sex scene between Michael and Lisa, the woman who inspires him to live life to the fullest.
After meeting Lisa in a Cincinnati hotel, the two form a strange and instant connection, with Michael, in particular, feeling inexplicably drawn to her. After meeting, he says, “I think you’re extraordinary, but I don’t know why yet”.
Towards the end of the film, the pair finally consummate their attraction to each other, having sex in one of the most uncomfortable scenes you could imagine between a pair of clay figures. Kaufman shoots it from an uncomfortably distant angle, not cutting away for the duration of the scene as we hear these puppets moaning, with Kaufman punishing the audience with its awkwardness.
With Kaufman’s weary gaze and eternal cynicism, the message of Anomalisa feels very clear. Despite this joyful encounter between Michael and Lisa, it is not a connection that is founded on anything real, and Michael is merely projecting what he wants to feel onto the unsuspecting people around him, trying to flesh out his own dreams in the shadows of other people and forcing us to watch one of the most uncomfortable sex scenes of all time as he does so.
