Mary & Max
Review
by Anthony Morris
When Adam Elliot won the Academy Award for
his animated short film Harvie Krumpet in 2004 it was a little hard to
see where he would go next. Krumpet was such an individual achievement
as far as its quirky mix of comedy and pathos went, not to mention that
it was filmed in stop-motion Wallace & Grommit-style, which
doesn't lend itself to quick cash-in follow-ups. And yet, watching his
first feature-length film Mary & Max, it all seems so obvious
where Elliot would go.
Mary (the voice of Toni Collette) is a
quiet, shy girl growing up in a dysfunctional household in an
unimpressive Melbourne suburb in the 1970s. Not surprisingly, a lack of
real human contact of any kind leads her to write to a person picked
out at random from a New York phone book in the hope that they'll write
back. That person turns out to be Max (Philip Seymour
Hoffman), a fairly strange and obsessive individual who isn't without
his own form of charm. And so begins a back and forth
communication that spans the globe and twenty years, following Mary as
she grows up, falls in love and becomes an adult, and Max as he wins
the lottery and visits a mental institution or two.
This tale of two very different but equally
quirky individuals finding each other without ever actually meeting is
extremely funny, heart-crushingly sad and often both at once.
Elliot's quirky character designs turn out
to be perfect for the story he's telling, while the story's wild shifts
in tone - rarely has "you'll laugh, you'll cry" been more appropriate –
work thanks to the constant focus on those characters. It's a story
where the people come first and that (plus an extremely big heart)
makes this a film to warm to.
3.5 out
of 5
Mary
& Max
Australian release: 9th Apr, 2009
Official
Site: Mary & Max
Cast: Toni Collette, Philip
Seymour Hoffman, Eric Bana, Barry Humphries, Bethany Whitmore
Director: Adam Elliot
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