What is an abnormality? Why is it normal?

Mckenzie 2022-01-04 08:01:54

This is a pessimistic and gloomy animated film that makes people fearful.
The content of the film is unremarkable. A best-selling writer was invited to another city to give a speech for his best-selling book. On the way, he had tortured an old lover, met a new woman and then derailed, and finally returned to his family.
But its manifestation makes people look uncomfortable.
The actor is a "successful man" who is extremely lonely and painful. Seeing the whole world from his eyes, everyone is the same, and they even share the same voice. So he received a phone call from his wife and daughter, and he could only rely on his tone to judge who was his wife and who was his son. At a house party, the whole person collapsed and watched a bunch of people who looked exactly the same and smiled at him, and he had to hold on to respond to every greeting.
The biggest drama in the film comes from that hard-won encounter. The actor accidentally heard the voice of a woman coming from the corridor when he took a bath. He dressed in a panic and knocked on the door one by one until he met this shy and inferior girl. He praised the girl with all kinds of sincere love words and encouraged her to talk and sing. In the end, I spent a good night together (the reality of the sex scenes performed by the puppets makes me embarrassed enough to watch).
But the next day, when he decided to divorce and be with the girl, he found that the girl's face and voice began to change, until finally, it became the familiar face and voice that made people fearful.
At the end of the film, when the actor is giving a speech, facing the uniform face of the audience, especially the face of his lover who was still alive the day before but cannot be distinguished, he finally has a nervous breakdown. "What does it mean to be human? What is pain? What is the purpose of living?" He asked from the podium.
Finally, when he came to his senses, he could only sigh, and insisted on completing the speech that was inferior to the soul according to the manuscript.

What does it mean to be human?
What is the pain?
What is the purpose of living?

The film's questions raised by the middle-aged crisis are simply shocking.
As one bean friend commented, life is lonely, life is nothing but boring and painful repetition, and love is just an "abnormal" reaction of hormones.

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Extended Reading
  • Alysha 2022-03-21 09:02:29

    love the new and hate the old

  • Toby 2022-04-24 07:01:16

    Charlie Kaufman's films are as uncomfortable as they've always been, be it Synonyms of New York or this one, but a certain audience will love it, and I'm glad I'm not a part of that, because I don't have the spirit for that question. I don't know if a mentally ill patient is in pain, but for the people around them, it is very painful and fearful. The director is good at expressing the pain of the patients themselves. Just like Fegley's paranoia in this film, while hurting others, he is also in deep pain and unable to extricate himself, repeating endlessly over and over again. ...to make stop-motion animation like this, it's still R-rated, and the director is really strong and talented. ...There are multiple explanations for the ending of this film, any of which can make sense, whether Lisa exists, or whether there is only a sex doll who can sing and has scars on her face, it can all make sense. ... The director's third director "I Want to End It All", I don't have the courage to watch it for the time being.

Anomalisa quotes

  • [From Trailer]

    Michael Stone: Look for what is special about each individual, focus on that.

  • Michael Stone: Sometimes there's no lesson. That's a lesson in itself.