Jack Rushton - BA (Hons) Computer Animation Arts

Mary and Max is an animated feature length comedy film released in 2009, directed and written by Adam Elliot.

Core Premise:
This film follows the story of the unlikely friendship of 2 people from opposite sides of the world. Max is a 44 year old overweight Jewish man from New York, who is lonely due to his lifetime struggle of making bonds with other people, which at the start is unknown why. Mary is a young girl from Australia who lives with her alcoholic mother and father who is constantly working. She gets teased for her birth mark by other kids at school and generally feels alone with no friends. The one thing they both have in commonan is their obsession with a television show called "The Noblets" where they both see it as a happy alternative which is colourful and everyone has lots of friends in contrast to their own lives where everything seems bleak and lonely. They become pen pals and form a bond over their shared love of chocolate which becomes a recurring theme. They begin telling each other about their lives and become interested in each other, nervously awaiting each letter. Eventually one of Mary's letter causes a large panic attack for Max which stops him from replying for 8 months. When he finally does he explains how he went to see a therapist and was diagnosed with asperger's disorder, and also how his anxiety attacks stopped him from replying. A lot of the story following on from this centres around Max's newly diagnosed mental disorder. Mary is inspired by it and starts to take an interest in mental health with an aim of curing asperger's disorder. She writes her thesis for her degree on Max and it gains traction to the point it is picked up by a publisher. She sends Max the first copy of the book. When he receives it he goes into a fit of rage as he is not happy with his mental issues being displayed to the public. Trying to find the right words to express his anger he eventually gives up and takes the key for the letter M off his typewriter and sends it to Mary in the post. Realising how she has upset Max she destroys all the copies of the books and spirals into an alcohol fueled period of depression where her husband leaves her and she attempts to take her own life. Right after her suicide attempt she receives a parcel from Max, who has found it in his heart to forgive her, and gifts her his entire possession of Noblets collectibles. This gives Mary new hope and a new energy on life. She decides to travel to New York to see Max, but when she arrives she finds him dead in his apartment. While initially sad she gazes around the room and notices all the letters, drawings and pictures she had sent max over the years. Plastered over all the ceilings and walls, so she knows that she was always in his heart. In his final letter to Mary, Max had stated that she was his best and only friend.

Authors:
Mary and Max is directed and written by Adam Elliot who was also largely responsible for the stop motion animation. Elliot began making animated films in the 1990s at an arts college in Melbourne, Australia. His first film was an animated short he released as an amateur while still studying. Since then he has made 5 more films which were professionally funded. Mary and Max was Elliot's first feature length animation which managed to get some big actors onboard. Aside from this all his other animations have been short films. Over this time Elliot has had great success with his films submitting them to hundreds of film festivals and winning multiple awards. A lot of his stories seem to be related to issues of his own life and come from personal experience leading to a more authentic style of film making where it comes across as genuine.

Production:
The film is animated in a claymation style, where clay models are animated using stop motion (taking each frame as a picture. This style allows the characters to be molded easily and can quite easily change. This style also lends quite a lot to the effect of the film. While it is a comedy it is still quite dark at points, with multiple deaths throughout the film. The silliness of the animation makes these dark moments more humorous and managed to achieve quite a unique effect I think would be hard to achieve with live action footage or 2D drawn animation.

Reception:
Mary and Max first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009. From here on it received 2 awards from other film festivals, one of which was for best animated feature film, before it was released to the mainstream in cinemas. While it was never a large success at the box office and didn't garner large amounts of attention, it still received a mostly positive reception from critics and audiences, receiving an astoundingly high score of 95% on the review site Rotten Tomatoes. It was generally seen as being well animated and well written. With many people citing Elliot's dry wit that carries on throughout the film, as well as the 'film noir' style which aided the story in conveying a continuous tone.