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Similar to: Amelie
Mary & Max took me completely by surprise. Given the aesthetic of the film and the comical tone, I was prepared for another quant little claymation film. The story revolves around two adorably sculpted characters that resemble Don Martin drawings: Mary Daisy Dinkle from Australia and Max Jerry Horowitz from New York.
Mary, a child from Australia lives in a world dominated by browns. Her mother drinks, shop lifts, and accuses Mary of getting fat. Her father works in a factory and spends his spare time stuffing animals in the shed. Mary’s parents provide her young mind with few answers to her questions about life so, in a moment of inspiration, she picks a name out of an American phone book and writes the name a letter.
Her letter finds Max. Max lives in a one bedroom apartment in New York. Mary’s brown letter is an invasion of color in Max’s otherwise black and white life. He suffers from asperger syndrome (calling himself an aspy) and regularly has panic attacks when he receives letters from Mary. When Mary asks him about love it bring on an attack so serious he is briefly institutionalized and subjected to shock treatments. Mary and Max become dependent on each other through a series of gifts and funny letters.
As the story progresses we start to sense a deep reservoir of feeling hiding behind the movies whimsical tone. Details about their family history that were so casually tossed out between jokes become deep scars that surgery can’t remove (the way in one scene Mary removes her birthmark.) It’s hard to say much more about the movie without giving away some of the surprise the movie brought me.
This kind of immersion wouldn’t have been possible if the details of the movie hadn’t been so expertly assembled. Toni Collette and Phillip Seymour Hoffman provide Mary and Max’s voice and are pitch perfect. Hoffman is particularly good as the lonely Horowitz and it wasn’t until the end of the movie that I even realized that it was his voice. Mary’s Australia and Max’s New York are very well visualized as well. When Max walks into his building and climbs into the elevator I was reminded of the Coen Brother’s hotel in Barton Fink.
One of the differences between a good movie and great one is I will return to a great movie’s characters in my mind days after I’ve watched the film. It’s been a week now since I saw Mary and Max and I can honestly say that I’ve thought about it at some point each of the last seven days. Here is an animated movie that doesn’t pander to any particular audience or age group. It doesn’t dumb itself down. Instead it tells a story about two people that is whimsical, funny, lonely, sad, and intensely human.
Verdict: Watch
note: this review is a part of Ian’s List of Shame.
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