Starring: Toni Collette (as Mary), Philip Seymour Hoffman (as Max), Eric Bana (as Damien) and Barry Humphries (as the Narrator)
Director: Adam Elliot
Rated: PG
THIS is an animated (claymation) Australian feature film written and directed by Adam Elliot.
Elliot gave us the excellent 2003 Academy Award winning short, Harvie Krumpet, and here he follows up with a wonderfully creative film about our perceptions of the disabled, the experiences of disabled people themselves, and values we should look for in ourselves when we form judgements about other people.
The film is filled with messages that demand our attention, and they occur at all three of these levels. Embracing differences and acceptance of the marginalised lie at its core.
A strong cast of well known actors provides the voices for the animated clay figures.
The film depicts an unusual friendship between Max, a middle-aged, obese Jewish man with Asperger’s Syndrome living in New York, and Mary, a young, lonely, overweight girl living on Lamington Drive, Mt Waverley, Melbourne.
In desperation and caught in a dysfunctional family that has no understanding of her, Mary picks Max’s name at random from an international telephone book and begins a pen-relationship.
There are feelings of great sadness associated with many images in this film, and it is easy at times to feel a little overwhelmed by the awfulness of life, and by Elliot’s depictions of it.
The bleakness of the vision has a purpose.
The bond between Mary and Max is something that Elliot himself had once in a pen-relationship he held with an Asperger’s sufferer and he maintained it for about 20 years.
Perhaps, for this reason, there is special validity behind the insights projected in the film, and the movie is very compelling to watch. This is a director who knows what he is showing, and it is very much a film from the heart.
The scene where Mary attempts suicide to the ringing voice of Doris Day singing “Que Sera, Sera” (Whatever Will Be, Will Be), while her memories swirl around, is riveting.
The film’s vision clearly reflects the darker side of human nature, although many comic moments and instances of hilarity are part of the mix.
The feelings of the characters range from joy to depression, and from happiness to acute anxiety; we are shown images of dead animals; and there are multiple images of human and animal excrement, alcoholism, and attempted suicide.
Barry Humphries narrates the ups and downs of the relationship between Mary and Max with humour and compassion, and his incongruous observations add an Australian flavour to much of the humour in the movie that should transfer easily enough to other cultures.
The film as a whole is uncompromising in facing the complexities of human survival and suffering.
Ultimately, the friendship between Mary and Max is something you want to share, and its multiple messages are preserved in the forefront of your mind.
The film is about forgiveness – Max wanting to say “sorry” to Mary after he was hurt by her.
It is also about what true friendship means between two very lonely people. And it is also about learning that each of us has the right to strive for self-worth and appreciation by others, despite our human imperfections.
The relationship between Mary and Max is a tough one for animation to capture, but the effectiveness of the effort is never in doubt.
The scripting for the film is innovative, and reflects the needs of the disabled very sensitively; the detail of the clay animation is amazing; and settings are created that depict their character with potency.
Shades of light are used to depict New York, for instance, as a city that looks just as isolated as it obviously is for Max. There is extraordinary attention to detail in the movie as a whole.
The film took five years to create its complex world. It used 218 puppets, 133 sets, and 132,000 individual frames.
Overall, this is a film that you admire and respect greatly. Appreciation of its quality or the level of imagination behind its creation, is never an issue.
The essential melancholy of the film helps to preserve the messages that lie at its heart.
In this film, however, respect, and admiration turn all the time into something else, which is creatively positive, and emotionally exhilarating.
Peter W. Sheehan is an associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting.
