(Anomalisa is unreleased and does not yet have an official release date. Therefore, this review will remain light on story details and spoilers)

Anomalisa, the first film written and directed by Charlie Kaufman since Synecdoche, New York seven years ago, is a brilliant and wholly unique piece of work. Co-directed by Moral Orel animator Duke Johnson, Anomalisa tells the story of Michael Stone (David Thewlis), a businessman who suffers from a mental disorder which makes him see everybody else outside of himself as the same person. The rarely-mentioned illness gives a narrative reason for the movie’s presentation, in which all men and women share the same face and voice.

However, the framework also serves to visualize the feeling of boredom and over-familiarity that tends to come with age. As the film progresses and we follow Michael through beautifully detailed yet somehow depressing locations and witness the repetition of various thoughts and ideas (including some hilarious asides about the Minneapolis Zoo, which is apparently “zoo-sized”), we empathize with him, sharing the feeling that everything and everyplace is inherently the same. When he begins seeking out somebody special, whether it be an ex or a local fling, we understand what he’s striving for on a human level.

What makes this all the more remarkable is that the entire film is created using puppets and stop-motion animation. On a technical level, this explains why almost every man and woman in the film (outside of Michael, who is the POV character and therefore unique) looks exactly the same: they’re the same puppet model, with different hair and clothes, voiced by the same voice actor (Tom Noonan). The aesthetic similarities between every side character becomes the norm, so when there is any sort of anomaly at all, it’s as exciting to  us as it is to Michael.

The use of puppets also allows the filmmakers to get away with certain scenes and ideas which may not be possible in a live-action film. A few sequences call out of the artifice of the puppets in a thematically relevant way, and other subject matter is allowed to be more explicit than typical R rated movies. However, nothing about Anomalisa feels gratuitous or sensationalized.

In fact, the blatant artifice of the puppets (many of which have visible lines on their faces where they are manipulable) eventually fades away completely, to the point in which you forget you’re watching puppets instead of real actors. Duke Johnson and his animation team at Starburns Industries did an incredible job animating the puppets like actual people, as realistic in their idling as they are in action. Because we become so accustomed to the aesthetics of the film and begin looking at the major characters as human beings, even a sex scene can come across as an honest moment of connection between two people instead of a big puppet-sex joke. Despite its readily apparent onscreen artifice, Anomalisa is one of the most human, emotionally-bare films of the year.

Kaufman’s script is also aware of its protagonist’s own hypocrisies. A late plot point reveals Michael’s yearning for the unique to be a fool’s goal, as the unique simply represents the unknown, and the unknown is bound to fade away into familiarity as soon as we obtain it. Michael openly complains about everybody’s lack of identity late in the film, and gets called out for it. “Who are you?” he’s asked. “Who is anybody?” Perhaps our ability to classify others as alike or uninteresting stems from the impossibility of knowing the depths of somebody else’s mind. We can inherently understand our own complexity by looking inward with perfect clarity, but can only understand each other through words and actions. That a puppet film provokes such thoughts is a testament to the creative team’s work and animation as an art form.

I am not certain as to when Anomalisa will be released theatrically, but I would highly recommend keeping an eye out for it. It is risky, thought-provoking, and completely unlike any film I’ve seen.