Charlie Kaufman - ANIMAL MY SOUL

Tag Archive: Charlie Kaufman

The animated humanity of Anomalisa

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April 10, 2016

ANOMALISA directed by Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson (USA, 2015)

Michael and Lisa

“I don’t want to live my life like everybody else,
And I don’t want to say that I feel fine like everybody else,
‘Cause I’n not like everybody else”

These lyrics by Ray Davies in The Kinks’ song ‘I’m Not Like Everybody Life’ serves as a neat summation of the central theme in Charlie Kaufman’s latest ‘mindfuck’ movie.

An ‘anomaly’ is defined by Macmillan Dictionary as “something unusual, unexpected or different from what usually happens”. As an animated feature for adults, including an explicit and realistic stop motion sex scene, this film is certainly an anomaly but it is also consistent with Kaufman’s previous work in that it is less concerned with external reality and more focused on what goes on inside our heads. Continue reading →

Tags: Anomalisa, Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson, Fregol condition, Fregol Hotel, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michael Thewlis, mid-life crisis, mindfuck movies, People Are Strange, The Doors, The Kinks, Tom Noonan

SYNECDOCHE NEW YORK – THE FATE OF DREAMS

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April 10, 2014

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK directed by Charlie Kaufman (USA, 2008)

This is a movie about life and dreams but mainly it’s about death.

We all have dreams, both big and small. Some of them are realized, most are not.

What gives us the impetus to work through our personal bucket lists is the transience of existence and the knowledge that someday we will die, as will everyone we know.

Theatre director Coden Cotard has a big dream. He wants to stage a play about everything: birth, dating, family and death. Particularly the last of these since, as he puts it bluntly yet accurately, “we are all hurtling towards death, but here we are for the moment, alive”.

Cotard wants his production to stand as his legacy and demands that there must be no compromises. It should tell the brutal truth, warts and all – no limits, no filters. He prepares post it notes for each participant, a single fact that the actors must build upon to create a character. Quickly you get the impression that the concept is so vast that it is unworkable.