Mary and Max | Adam Elliot, 2009
Stop motion animation is one of those long-standing facets of film history that, thanks to a handful of important people, will never be lost to the winds of change. The concept itself seems utterly oblivious to the march of technology and computer-generated graphics, seeming only to benefit from these advancements rather than finding itself buried beneath them. Of course, without the likes of Henry Selick, Nick Park, Tim Burton, and all of those who precede them, things could be very different. As it is, we have these artists to thank for inspiring the likes of Adam Elliot – an Australian animator whose work with clay on the 2003 short film Harvey Krumpet won him and Academy Award and who returns here with his first full-length claymation feature, Mary and Max. Thanks largely to the international exploits of messrs Burton and Park, not to mention a relatively successful festival run and the involvement of two big names in Philip Seymour Hoffman and Toni Collette, Elliot’s new film is now poised to take on America. Critics around the world already appear fond of the film, and at this point it seems increasingly likely that we will see it lining up alongside the likes of Up and perhaps Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo in the Kodak Theatre when award season finally arrives – three different breeds of animation, if you will. Mary and Max follows the lives of two people: a young Australian girl whose eccentric parents and odd appearance make her the subject of school bullying, and an obese, jewish New Yorker who enjoys collecting cigarette butts from the city streets and devouring chocolate hot dogs. Both have one thing in common – a lack of friends.
Rather than tell a story in the traditional sense or “weave a fable” as films of this kind normally do, Mary and Max merely gives an account of these two rather unimportant lives. This is done through Barry Humpries (also known as Dame Edna) who provides the brilliant narration here and whose reflective, classic British/American tone lends the film much of its charm. As for the aesthetic, Mary and Max certainly doesn’t break the mould when it comes to creating a new and exciting world using the stop motion technique in the way Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas did. In fact, with its oddly misshapen gothic look and exaggerated way of capturing realism, Elliot’s film owes quite a bit to this earlier work. Other than existing as an ode to the importance of friends, Mary and Max isn’t particularly concerned with teaching us anything at all, or indeed offering a traditional narrative that involves innocence, discovery, wonder; the alternate realities found in the likes of The Nightmare Before Christmas or Henry Selick’s Coraline. The story itself, that of two people who find solace in each other’s long-distance companionship, is wonderfully written, particularly the parts involving letters sent from Mary to Max and visa versa: every word carries weight. Part of the reason for this is the voice work behind the film. Toni Collette and Eric Bana do well enough with their handful of lines but, as usual, it is Philip Seymour Hoffman who shines: his portrayal of Max is particularly excellent – despite a New York drawl that at times seems a little forced – so that by the end of the movie his voice and Elliot’s character are very much one and the same.
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