If the long, hard, and often fruitless struggle to make even the faintest meaningful connection with another human being doesn’t sound like the basis for an adorable claymation film, you merely lack Adam Elliot’s vivid, sometimes wild, imagination. Elliot, an Australian animator best known for the Oscar-winning short Harvie Krumpet (2004), does some pretty amazing stuff with Mary & Max, an uneven but ultimately rewarding telling of the allegedly-true story of a bizarre pen-pal relationship between a lonely Australian girl and an Aspie from New York.
Mary Daisy Dinkle (Toni Collette) and Max Jerry Horowitz (Philip Seymour Hoffman) are friendless; Mary for the more conventional reasons of being awkward, pudgy, and oddly-birthmarked; Max because, to paraphrase the omnipresent narrator (Barry Humphries, dry in the classically British manner), he has trouble negotiating an unstructured and undesignated world. Reaching each other through serendipity and connecting instantly through chocolate, the Noblets, and a mutual intutition that each can relieve the other’s lonliness, a lifelong friendship begins.
New York, I love you, but you don't fit into my exceedingly limited way of engaging the world around me.
Elliot tales his tale with a surplus of gusto – a suburban Australia drenched in earth tones and filled with big-eyed animals and deeply-weird humanity stands in stark contrast to a grey-on-grey Manhattan bursting with noise and nearly-visible odors. The characters are brilliantly distinctive, the animation painstaking, and the story compelling. But the film is not without its flaws, some grievous – it’s mostly told as a recitation, almost entirely blanketed by voice-over from either the narrators or letters exchanged between the protagonists. It occasionally drones, and leaves you begging for these characters to actually interact, or even act, without feeling dictated to. And while the music is often used exceedingly well – especially Penguin Café Orchestra’s “Perpetuum Mobile,” – when it’s not, most notably in a scene near the conclusion set to Pink Martini’s version of “Que Sera,” it threatens to throw us out of the film altogether.
In spite of its flaws and limitations, Mary & Max is well-worth seeing, especially at a breezy 80 minutes. It’s mostly compelling, always inventive, and crafted with delicacy, care, and a weird but ineffable love for its creations. Veering between adorable and wicked with manic abandon, Mary & Max is an unusual, unique, but ultimately rewarding film.
Seen at the AFI Silver as part of the Washington Jewish Film Festival.
Hi! I'm a resident of Mt. Pleasant, an eclectic, well-loved diverse neighborhood located in on a hill in the northwest section of Washington, D.C. I originally started this blog with my boyfriend to share our thoughts about the various adventures and goings-on we experience every day. While we originally decided to co-write the blog, posting slowed down and life sped up, hence, very little from us. Now, I'm going to take it over as primary writer, however the gist stays the same. So if you read this blog, you can expect to hear about:
Where we travel.
Where we eat.
Where we party.
What we cook.
What movies we see.
What concerts we go to.
What TV shows we watch.
Our thoughts on the life and times of our home city, of which one of us is a lifer and the other a recent but enthusiastic adoptee.
And all kinds of other fun stuff! All accompanied by cool photos! So come back soon or put us in your feed.
And if you're wondering how we picked our pseudonyms and blog title, check out this Washington Post chat with Ezra Klein from August 27th:
Adam - Zurich, Switzerland: A bit off topic, but maybe you could throw this in at the end of your chat session. My wife and I are moving to the DC area, where would you recommend living for an urban 30-something couple? If you had to choose between Clarendon, Rosslyn or Ballston, which would it be?
Ezra Klein: None of them! I recommend living in DC if you can, particularly the Mt. Pleasant or Columbia Heights area. Petworth is getting better fast, and it's comparatively affordable, and some interesting stuff is happening down in the 5th and K area.
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