Mary

and Max


Mary and Max is a Claymation directed
by Adam Elliot. Elliot is an award-
winning director and is well known
mainly for his animations. His previous
work includes Brothers and Harvie
Krumpet. Within most of his work it is
evident that Elliot has this style in the
way he creates his stop motion
characters and sets. Like some of his
other work Mary and Max is a hand
crafted clay stop motion animation
written and directed my Elliot. Philip
Seymour Hoffman and Toni Collette are
some of the voice cast in this animation.

Mary and Max is an adult animation
based on friendship. Their friendship
starts when Mary sends Max a letter.
Mary Daisy Dinkle is an 8-year-old girl
who is a loner, not very popular at school a mother who is an alcoholic and her
father who spends all this time with his stuffed birds, she longs for a friend. Max
is a overweight man who lives in New York and has spent most of his life alone,
with weird habits like collecting his toe nails in jars labeled by year. She picks out
his address from a phone directory and writs him a letter. Within these letters
they expresses their feeling and emotions as they have no one else they can talk
to, along with the letters they add small gifts for example a chocolate bar,
photographs etc. To one another they are the friend neither of them have.

What the film is trying to achieve is a message about friendship, and it shows this
between two people who are so different and having something in common,
which makes them pen pals. This message is achieved well through the
animation and story. However as the years go by and their friendship grows it
seems a little weird, especially when Mary gets depressed when Max hasnt
replied and forgetting her husband and caring more about Max, she was also
getting into similar habits as her mum. Furthermore got the impression there
was going to be something more than friendship between them, knowing the age
gap between the pair made it weird.