Thom Yorke's ANIMA is out, and Paul Thomas Anderson's film is on Netflix

Thom Yorke's ANIMA came out on download and streaming services early on Thursday 27 June through XL, and Paul Thomas Anderson's film of the same name went up on Netflix the same day. Anderson cast Yorke as a silent-film clown chasing a woman across a city to return the lunchbox she left on the train, and modelled the part on Buster Keaton. I just kept saying, “More Buster Keaton, more Buster Keaton!” It seemed to fit.¹²

The album, announced only a week ago, runs nine songs and 48 minutes, produced by Nigel Godrich; CD and vinyl follow on 19 July. Phil Selway plays sped-up drums on “Impossible Knots”, and Joey Waronker, of Yorke's band Atoms for Peace, comes in at the end of “The Axe”.

The film runs 15 minutes and premiered the night before at IMAX screenings in about 40 cinemas, by Anderson's count. It opens on a train of dozing commuters in matching overalls whose nodding turns into the choreography. The woman is Dajana Roncione, the Italian actress who is Yorke's partner. Chasing her, he struggles up an escalator and loses a fight with a pair of turnstiles while a queue builds behind him. To “Traffic” he battles across a floor that tilts under the dancers, with projections by Tarik Barri, who does the visuals at his Tomorrow's Modern Boxes shows. To “Dawn Chorus” the two of them dance through Prague at night and reach a tram at sunrise, lunchbox returned, before the film ends where it began, with Yorke asleep on the train.

It was shot from 11 to 19 May in Prague and in a museum at Les Baux-de-Provence, where the cave scenes were filmed. Anderson made the “Daydreaming” and “The Numbers” videos, and Jonny Greenwood scored Phantom Thread for him.

Damien Jalet, who choreographed Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria when Yorke scored it, did the choreography here. Anderson told Variety that the film grew out of that job, with Yorke and Jalet feeling they had unfinished business and himself “a third wheel”, and that the three began talking about it in December. So much of this stuff is directly from Thom's brain.¹²