Michael Stone. Businessman, and a Successful Man at that. A spokesperson for customer service. Who can’t understand why he doesn’t care for people.

He’s the white man archetype that we fear ever getting to know: someone who shushes you in a library, cuts you in line, yells at the waiter, and sticks gum under a desk. Never in life have I ever betted on a Michael Stone, so watching this movie was like sitting on the wrong side of the bleachers during a home game. He’s rude, curt, salacious- you watch Anomalisa with little faith in Michael Stone. Less is seen in Stone’s actions than more of his effect on other people: an ex-girlfriend 10 years ago that still haunts him, and his neglected family back home.

On the surface level, you may wonder what makes you continue watching Anomalisa. It’s a claymation that has half the interesting character designs as Coraline. The life of Michael Stone is deeply mediocre. For Christ’s sake, he’s a man who sells books about customer service. Not only are the character designs drab, the set design drab, but everyone around Michael Stone is narrated by one man- Tom Noonan. Michael Stone picks up a phone call to hear his wife and son share the same voice, asking him when he will be coming back home from his business trip. He ends the phone call just to be asked about his plane seat by a flight attendant, who shares the same voice. Not only does his life leave little for imagination, but it prevents it from happening. All until he meets Lisa. Or at least, when he hears Lisa.

• Michael Stone: [to Lisa] I think you’re extraordinary.
• Lisa: Why?
• Michael Stone: I don’t know yet. It’s just obvious to me that you are.

Lisa. A voice that is like a child’s skipping stone in an old, forgotten pond. Lisa has infected Michael Stone purely by saying “hello.” Michael is obsessed with keeping Lisa’s voice in his life for however long he can. We aren’t sure how long it’s been for him to hear another one’s voice or why this curse has been put upon him, but it’s implied that Michael Stone was not always the deeply nihilistic man that we are watching now.

Lisa is the archetype of a daughter who may always be too vulnerable to leave the nest. She’s inappropriate (in the opposite sense of Stone), neurotic, and self-harmfully honest. While these two are not a match, they are compatible- in a disturbing sense.

But not too long after, we see that people can’t change that fast. He neglects Lisa when her voice starts to morph into the familiar yet disdaining reality that is Tom Noonan. Stone doesn’t learn anything from Lisa, just as he hasn’t learned anything from his 10-years-ago ex-girlfriend, or his present wife and child.

However, for a brief time, we can see the brief human that Stone could have been if it weren’t for this curse. We watch him enjoy sex, laugh, and fantasize about a life greater than his own. Some could say that his actions of Stone were purely to manipulate Lisa into being with him, but I want to believe that this was his true self all along. The man who had found the light again, the light which is real human connection. This idea of connection that he writes about, practices, has built his whole career upon, was nothing but a façade until this very moment when he met Lisa. That there was someone out there who was able to bring him out of whatever euphemism it is that Tom Noonan is. An anomaly named Lisa.