Mary and Max (2009) Premise Film Review

Fig 1. Mary and Max Movie Poster.

Mary and Max is an Australian animation that tells the story of two unlikely pen pals, Mary Dinkle aged eight living in Australia and Max Horovitz a fourty-four year old man living in New York, Mary starts writing to him when she randomly rips out his name in a phone book and the pair begin over twenty years of correspondence including gifts, chocolate and photos forming a heart warming friendship. There are themes of confusion, bullying, suicide, misfitting, betrayal, guilt, but the core themes that make this film are mental health, loneliness, misunderstanding and friendship. Exploring these themes and imperfect characters in a dry humoured way makes this story heart warming and deeply empathetic, both are unloved and unregarded in their worlds, Mary is the only daughter of an alcoholic mother and a distracted father and Max suffers with Asperger’s syndrome who is struggling to understand his world. The ideas of the film are challenging as the audience become so involved with these characters, we learn lots about them, (even the little things such as Max’s five favourite words) to understand and relate to them. We watch Mary grow up so when she gets to the end of her tether and attempts suicide, her mental state becomes difficult to watch and we know what she’s thinking and why without any narration. The most challenging thing about Mary and Max is how real it is, even though the clay characters don’t look realistic it’s the life they’ve breathed into this clay, the emotions that makes it so real, in fig 2 you can see Mary's tears as she writes her letter about being bullied.

Fig 2. Mary's Brown World

Adam Elliot is the author, he wrote, produced and directed Mary and Max. Before Mary and Max he made four animated shorts which he calls ‘clayographies’ clay-animated-biographies, the four shorts, (Uncle, Cousin, Brother and Harvey Crumpet) all explored one character, Mary and Max was his first film to explore two characters; his stories are narrator-driven. The characters he creates are outsiders, marginalised and underdogs, he bases his characters on his childhood experiences, he always befriended the people who were teased or bullied or seen as strange because he had great empathy for them and couldn’t understand why they were being teased and misunderstood. His purpose for making Mary and Max is to educate audiences about mental illness, what it’s like to have Asperger’s syndrome, turrets, anxiety etc by putting the audience in the their shoes. Elliot’s biggest challenge as a writer wasn’t comedy but to make the audience be touched by his characters to feel empathy for them - to have the power to make an audience feel something. His biographies he doesn’t set a length for, he lets his characters tell him how long their story should be. 

This film uses the medium claymation, where characters are sculpted out of clay, have armatures placed inside and are painted — claymation is a type stop motion. The medium had an impact on the narrative, clay works well with the grotesque style of the characters, Elliot’s style supports the theme of misunderstanding because these characters, before we learn our affection for them, find ourselves judging (and possibly rejecting) before we even know them and their story. The clay works well with the art direction and colour schemes, for each location has their own specific colour scheme to reflect their worlds, Max’s New York is greys and blacks where as Mary’s Australia is a mix of browns (see fig 2), this is significant to telling the story visually without words, for example, when Mary sends a red pom pom to Max it really stands out in his dark world reflecting how she is significant to him bringing some colour into his life and most importantly companionship (see fig 3).

Fig 3. Max's Grey World

Mary and Max has positive reviews for its charming and heart warming quality and has been welcomed in difference countries around the world, it was a big production by Melodrama Pictures costing 8.24 million AUD. In the past has won: Ottawa International Animation Festival Grand Prize (2009), Annecy International Animated Film Festival Cristal Award for Best Feature (2009), Australian Directors Guild Award for Best Direction in a Feature Film (2009), Asia Pacific Screen Awards for Best Animated Feature Film (2009), Berlin International Film Festival for Best Feature Film. And has been nominated for Australian Film Institute for Best Original Screenplay, Best Film and Best production Design among others.

Illustration List:

Figure 1. Mary and Max Movie Poster (2009) [Poster] At: https://www.italki.com/notebook//entry/670054
Figure 2. Mary’s Brown World (2009) At: https://obscurelybeautiful.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/mary-and-max/
Figure 3. Max’s Grey World (2009) At: https://obscurelybeautiful.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/mary-and-max/