Flick of The Day: Mary and Max

From strange beginnings can great things grow. At first glance a claymation adaptation of the true life pen pal relationship between an obese middle aged New Yorker and a lonely young girl from the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia would not seem like a promising idea for a film. However, in the hands of Australian animator Adam Elliott it becomes a truly ground breaking piece of cinema. Today's flick of the day is Mary & Max.

Mary & Max

In 1976, a young girl named Mary, voiced by Toni Collette struggles with loneliness due to her alcoholic mother and emotionally absent father. One day on a trip to the post office, she picks a name from the New York phone directory and decides to write to them. Her letter reaches Max Horowitz voiced by Philip Seymour Hoffman, a 44 year old Jewish man who struggles with obesity and Asperger's syndrome. Amazingly, these two misanthropes who live on the margins of their own society find in each other a friend with which to converse and share their doubts, worries and neuroses and love of chocolate over the course of 20 years. Where they initially appear as oddballs and outsiders, we gradually see that both are perceptive and aware of the world around them and perhaps more importantly far nicer human beings than those supposedly normal folk.

A work of incredible depth and emotional maturity, it transcends its genre to tell a tale that everyone should know. It is not a happy story and not for children but it is a worthy one all the same. Rarely have issues such as mental illness, loneliness and isolation been dealt with in such a mature manner in a piece of cinema. It's a dark and beautiful picture and one will surely be left with a lot to think over for having seen it.

While the animation is the star of the show, the voice work is excellent throughout. Toni Collette and Philip Seymour Hoffman are unrecognisable in their voice characters and perhaps that is as it should be. While the film shows a bleak view of the world, it is this bleakness which gives it such an emotional punch and it is perhaps closer to the reality of many lives than we dare to admit. The relationship between the two allows Mary to open up to the world, indeed the animation noticeably brightens as her own confidence improves while Max finds that which he has sought all his life, a friend.

Overall then this is a triumph of a film with a deep message about what friendship means. As the film notes at its close "God gave us relatives, thank God we can choose our friends".