If you haven’t felt a lack of Charlie Kaufman in your life these past seven years, you need to re-evaluate your priorities. Luckily, the wait is over. The master of internalised anguish and bitingly funny insecurity is back with his first animated feature. Co-directing with Duke Johnson, who oversaw the wonderful stop-motion sequences in Community, and with a number of team members from the show on board, Anomalisa is a desperately sad, intricately clever journey through one middle-aged man’s mental crisis, all shot in gorgeous stop-motion.
Competing for the main prize, Anomalisa starts with the arrival in Cincinnati of customer services guru Michael Stone, voiced by David Thewlis, in town for a conference. Except he’s in something of a crisis, unable to distinguish one person from the next. Everyone looks and sounds the same (literally as they’re all voiced by Tom Noonan). Desperate for a connection, he’s willing to throw away his family, who now no longer appear separate from any other person he meets, in search of one unique individual.
Kaufman’s return maintains all his dark humour, and internalised anguish, while offering the surprise of a remarkably erotic sex scene, all the more so as foreplay starts with Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the only person Michael has found with her own voice, singing “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” in Italian. For all the comic touches and beautiful animation, it’s a desperately sad and powerfully affecting experience. I have a new favourite for the Golden Lion.
Unlike Kaufman, the latest Amos Gitai film was not something I’d factored in. Never a fan of his, the inclusion of Rabin, the Last Day in the competition strand didn’t exactly fill me with excitement. Tsili last year practically put me to sleep. I’m glad I gave it a go as this docudrama about Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination proved magnificent. Mostly consisting of drawn out interviews, Gitai explores the security lapses that allowed for Rabin’s death, and the environment that created the threat. Add in a powerful score and it’s two and a half hours you won’t regret.
Finished with competition films for the day, I returned to the classics section, although it depresses me that a film made in 1990 now counts as a classic. Charles Burnett is a highly underrated director, and the chance to catch To Sleep with Anger, his almost novelistic take on the life of a black family living in LA, was too good to pass up. Danny Glover is the catalyst that stirs everything up when he drops in on old friends, bringing simmering tensions to the surface. Burnett even turned up to present the film. What more can you want?
From one acclaimed American director to another, the day finished with a screening of De Palma, Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s documentary charting Brian De Palma’s career. It’s an incredibly simple set-up – a seated De Palma talks through his career with nothing more than film clips to break up the shots. It’s also addictively entertaining. I’m no De Palma fan – I’m in the camp that finds his stylistic tics irritating – but he has made some undeniably great films, and even better, he’s a wonderful speaker. Dropping in anecdotes from Steven Spielberg’s car phone to the similarity between Cliff Robertson and a mahogany wall, it’s a pleasure to spend a couple of hours in his company. I urge everyone to give it a go.