“I don’t know what else there is to write about other than being human, or more specifically, being this human.”
Charlie Kaufman is a filmmaker who likes to ask the big questions. His scripts, as well as the features he directs, almost always grapple with some degree of profound moral inquiry. Sometimes it’s escapism, as in “Being John Malkovich,” where a puppeteer leading a drab life yearns to escape into the mind of the tiular actor. Other times, it’s creative stagnancy, as in “Adaptation,” or lost love and tarnished memories, as in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” Last year, Kaufman, and co-director Duke Johnson, graced holiday audiences with “Anomalisa,” a beguiling stop-motion oddity about an unhappy man who gives speeches on the benefits customer service, and the woman who helps to lift him out of his depressive funk. A movie rendered in miniature is easy to call minor, but “Anomalisa,” though not a perfect movie by any means, is hard to forget — it's as dense...
