75) Mary and Max

Mary and Max (2009)

Director: Adam Elliot

Starring: Toni Collette, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Eric Bana, Barry Humphries, Bethany Whitmore, Renee Geyer, Ian 'Molly' Meldrum

A few years ago I saw Harvie Krumpet, the short animation for which Australian filmmaker Adam Elliot won an Oscar in 2004, and loved it. So I was quite keen to see his feature debut Mary and Max when it came out last year. I didn't manage to catch it while it was at the cinemas (which seems to be a bit of a general problem for the Australian film industry), but when I say it for sale for $12 at JB Hifi I thought I'd give it a go.

In the mid-1970s in suburban Melbourne, a lonely, insecure, eight-year-old named Mary Dinkle (Whitmore/Collette) decides to write a letter to someone chosen at random from an American telephone book she finds in the library. That someone ends up being Max Horowitz (Hoffman), an equally lonely, middle-aged man living in New York who suffers from anxiety attacks as a result of his Asperger's Syndrome. An unlikely connection is forged between the two and over the course of 20 years of correspondence they become the best of friends as they deal with the ups and downs of life.

As I said Mary and Max is Adam Elliot's debut feature and it has a real short film feel to it. Elliot's strength as a filmmaker is the characters he creates. Narratives don't seem to be Elliot's strength at this stage and in the second half of the film we storyline starts to labour a bit and you get the impression that a few of the narrative threads (ie. Mary's relationship with Damien) have been introduced primarily to pad the story out to feature length. The best part of the film is the first half where the progression of the narrative is not the primary focus, and rather we are just being introduced to these two wonderful characters through the writing of their letters, which contain some beautifully charming and funny material. Elliot also uses naration beautifully. This obviously also comes from his background in shorts films and it is always one of the primary features of his work. He always picks narrators with lovely, comforting voices. For Harvie Krumpet he used Geoffrey Rush. Previously he used William McGuinness in his trilogy Uncle, Brother and Cousin. In this case the narration is provided by Barry Humphries.

With Adam Elliot films it also pays to keep an eye out for the little humorous details in the image. Whether it is the jury member with the 'I Yodel for Jesus' t-shirt, the epitaphs on the headstones of Mary's parents; 'Always Merry, Killed by Sherry' and 'Here in the ground lies Noel who was drowned', Max's psychiatrist who's sign reads 'Dr. Bernard Hazelhof: Psychiatrist and Aerobics Instructor' or the ever changing sign held by the homeless man (voiced by Molly Meldrum) outside Max's building which goes from '50c Financial Advice' to '50c Hugs' to 'Free Kisses' to the slightly more profound 'Keep your money, I want change', the real pleasure of Elliot's films is in the details.

Since Pixar took off, computer animation has pretty much taken over the animation market. Even Nick Park, the man behind Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run teamed up with Dreamworks to make Flushed Away, a computer animation which used digitised versions of his traditionally claymation characters. To be honest though, I can kind of see why he would have been keen to move away from stop-motion. It is an excruciatingly slow process. A standard movie camera operates at 24 frames per second. Stop-motion animation works on the same principle, just slowed down. You set up your scene and take a photo. Click! Then you ever so slightly move a few of the pieces within the scene and take another photo. Click! Do that another 22 times and you have 24 frames, or one second of footage. Mary and Max took five years to make, including 57 weeks of shooting. There were six animation teams working on the project each producing roughly four seconds worth of footage a day. As slow as it is, and as much as it must drive you bonkers to work on, there is something really charming about stop-motion animation. Especially Elliot's animations. Elliot has developed quite a distinctive appearance to his films across the series of short films which led up to Mary and Max. His animation is not quite so shiny and refined as the animation in, for example, The Corpse Bride.

The other thing which makes Mary and Max stand out from most animation is the colourscape. We are used to animation being bright and vibrant whereas Mary and Max is quite dull colour-wise. Mary's world is all various shades of brown while Max's world is all various shades of grey, with the exception of the red pom-pom which Mary sent him. The use of this more somber colour palate reflects the state of the characters, both of whom are damaged individuals. Max suffers from depression as a result of his Asperger's hence his world being grey, while Mary is incredibly insecure as a result of the birthmark on her face which the narrator informs us was "the colour of poo" hence her world being brown.

It doesn't surprise me that this film didn't go brilliantly at the box office. Making animation for adults is always a financially dangerous because there is the assumption that animation is for children. The only time that animation for adults tends to work is when it is crude, and is going more for the adolescent market than the adult market (like South Park or Family Guy). Mary and Max is not a film for adults in the naughty, titillating way. It is a film for grown ups. The story deals with issues of depression, disability, disfunctional families and suicide. There is some weighty stuff in there which means that the end product is not necessarily family friendly. But the film runs into the problem that a fair share of the demographic that would enjoy such a story and the style of story telling doesn't see the film because they assume that animation is for kids.

Last year Mary and Max became the first stop-motion animation ever to open the prestigious independent film festival Sundance. This is fitting when you consider that Adam Elliot is pretty much Nick Park with indie filmmaker sensibilities. There is a lot to like about Mary and Max. It does what Adam Elliot does best by introducing us to some wonderful characters and some quirky humour. Philip Seymour Hoffman's unrecognisably dead-pan New Yorker portrayal of Max is brilliant. The film also looks beautiful. It is just a bit of a shame that the narrative is not quite as strong as the other elements of the film.