"Disorder" and the American-like business traveler

In 2016, Charlie Kaufman directed a novel stop-motion animation film called Anomalisa, whose Chinese translation is "Disorder". The content of the film is very simple, and it is not too much to call it a sketch. The hero, Michael Stone, is a success lecturer and an Englishman living in the United States. He frequently flies to cities, speaks and trains to corporate customer service departments, and has his own book on success. Once he flew to Cincinnati to give a speech. Bad weather, bumpy planes, chattering drivers all gave him a bad feeling. The worst part of it was that he once had a relationship of his own here, a relationship he had abandoned, a relationship he never wanted to mention again. The day before the speech, he finally called the woman he had abandoned. The meeting in the lounge did not resolve the grievances of the year, but the two broke up unhappy. A frustrated Michael happens to meet Lisa, a hotel neighbor who is also a fan of his own. Maybe it was drinking, maybe it was Lisa's difference, Michael was deeply fascinated by this woman. Lisa sang to him, told him her stories, told him that the words in his book, Anomalisa, had swept her away. Both of them drank wine, and it rained overnight. Michael thought he had found true love, and even planned to have a showdown with his wife and children. But on the second day of sobering up, at breakfast, Michael discovered a sense of disgust for Lisa, feeling that she was no longer the one who fascinated him. Distraught, Michael's speech the next day was a mess, he felt the city was a disaster for himself, and he ran away again. He escaped Lisa, escaped his old love, and returned to his home in Los Angeles.

In terms of plot, this film is very similar to George Clooney's "In the Clouds": one is a married man who fails in love and meets a one-night stand in a business trip; . In the end, it all reflects a complex love crux and loss. This seems to be a problem that business travelers often encounter, and it has become a part of their lives.
Take this film as an example, although it is a stop-motion animation, the details of the American-like business trip are very incisive and vivid. Since I have traveled by myself many times in the United States, this feeling is no less than a replay of the scene: bumpy plane, heavy rain, the captain wished the passengers goodbye next time, walked out of the airport with luggage, followed the signs to take a taxi to the hotel, The drivers chattered endlessly on the road, the hotel front desk showed ID and credit cards, the doorman helped with luggage and asked for tips, the hotel lounge, the ice machine in the corridor, the refrigerator minibar in the room. . . All in all, I felt as if I had returned to the United States. The feeling of loneliness and indifference of a business trip alone, mixed with a touch of depression and sadness—makes everyone think of some sad past events and people from the past. . . It belongs to the lonely soul of the Easterners and the fiery body of the Westerners. So raise a glass to dissipate your sorrows, life is geometric, drunk, dreaming and dying, and greed for joy for a while. It is difficult to experience this loneliness and desolation without traveling alone in an American city.

The biggest highlight of the film is mainly in the way of performance. Just like the name of the hotel in the film, the protagonist Michael seems to suffer from a disease of seeing everyone and thinking that everyone is acting to harm him. From Michael's point of view, everyone, male or female, has the same face and voice, although their hairstyles and dresses are different. The stop-motion puppets, therefore, all have the same model of face parts and use the same male voice. Everything changed until Michael met Lisa. Lisa has a different face, and although she is covering her scars with her hair, she has a beautiful voice, the only female voice in the entire film. In Michael's world, she has become an angel or a goddess, only beauty and true love. After one night, when Michael returned to his senses and his real life, Lisa's voice gradually mixed with the beautiful female voice, until it finally became the same male voice as everyone else - Michael's one-night stand-like love finally came. end. When he abandoned Lisa, walked into the house with the gift prepared for the child, the same faces and the same voices in the room made people think deeply. "Who are you, and who am I" - facing all this, Michael can only ask such a question.

From the perspective of character analysis, the protagonist of the film seems to have many different interpretations:
He is a scumbag in the general sense of today's society. He likes the new and hates the old. He keeps falling in love with new people, and abandons old people. At the same time, he finds a reason to escape in a high-sounding manner: he is sick, he has psychological problems, He has family, he doesn't feel right, etc. . . Nothing is his fault.
He's an immature person again, an emotionally unfortunate idiot who only appreciates each other superficially and intuitively to find his love. Once he enters the long and boring life itself, he will only dislike it, only find changes in his feelings, and impatiently look for the next victim.
Of course, on another level, it can also be said that he may be a person suffering from a mid-life crisis, or a successful person suffering from conservative business travel. Career, love, family -- this eternal iron triangle tests men in the workplace all the time. A person with a successful career may not have a happy family; a person with a happy family may not have a successful career; a person with a successful career and family may not be able to get love, or keep love forever young. So whether it is George Clooney in the cloud, or Michael Stone who is out of shape, as a successful business person, while busy with a thriving career in the airport and hotel in the cloud, he is looking for occasional romance and hopes to reap his "love" . However, the result is realistic after all. The wind is always blown away by the rain and the wind. The "love" that starts with the wind often ends with the wind. When the novelty is gone, and the reality of the quagmire hits, the one who really waits for him is still his wife and children at home. Get real, back to real life.

In general, the director and the play are by no means romantic, no matter the tone, environment, the story itself or the way of expression, there are some mysticism and pessimism everywhere. A kind of grandiosity that is definitely not in the traditional sense of Hollywood, but an overwhelming sense of powerlessness, which will more or less erode the audience. Gives a pessimistic beauty.

In addition, some mysterious details are worth playing with: for example, the hero dreamed of being called to the basement by the hotel manager, the manager asked him to drive a forklift to the desk to find him, and later said that everyone loved him, when these words Speaking from countless identical faces, there is a creepy feeling. Another protagonist bought a strange-looking Japanese singer doll for the child. The wife said that it was like semen. The male protagonist finally stared at the doll to the end of the movie. Lisa with a good singing voice, a songstress doll, beautiful lips, semen, as if there are strong sexual hints and meanings in it.

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