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Mary and Max (2009), directed by Adam Elliot is an Australian comedic stop-motion animation. The film features the rollercoaster friendship of a young Australian girl, Mary, and an elderly American, Max. One day at a post office in her home town in Australia, Mary finds an American phone book and decides to write to someone - Max. Over time, a friendship forms between the two, advice is given and gifts are exchanged, until Mary writes her University essay on Max's life, to which he takes great offence. This results in the two falling out until, eventually, Mary decides to fly out to America to visit Max with her infant child. Upon entering Max's apartment, Mary finds Max dead on his couch, staring up at the ceiling. She sits next to him, gazes where he was looking, and realises that his ceiling is full of the letter she had sent to him.

The film was directed by Adam Elliot, a successful Australian director, well-known for his movies featuring a general bitter-sweet quality. The studio responsible for the amazing stop-motion animation is Melodrama Pictures, again based in Australia. The film generally has a gloomy feel to it, with Max's scenes being almost entirely shot in greyscale, and the characters having been "sculpted with bulging eyes, wobbly lines and clumpy figures, Elliot's characters look haunted but cute" (Buckmaster, 2014), giving the entire animation a very unique aesthetic. This 'haunted but cute' feeling is exaggerated and helped along by the use of claymation - the rough-around-the-edges movements and textures aiding the art of the film.

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The movie was very well-received by moviegoers and critics, and rightly so. While story features topics that can be considered quite taboo and hard to deal with, however the comedy and general heartfelt moments throughout the film make it a great viewing experience, with those difficult topics actually aiding this, with the "serious sadness underpinning his vision only [making] the humour work better" (Robey, 2010). While the film isn't quite as well known  as it should be, it did manage to make approximately $1.7 billion and has been featured in multiple film festivals, even having opened the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

Bibliography -

Buckmaster, L. (2014) 'Mary and Max: Rewatching Classic Australian Films', The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/australia-culture-blog/2014/may/30/mary-and-max-rewatching-classic-australian-films

Robey, T. (2010) 'Mary and Max, Review', The Telegraph:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/8078477/Mary-and-Max-review.html

Illustration List -

[1] 'Mary and Max OST', 8Tracks:

https://8tracks.com/voodoo_n/mary-and-max-ost

[2] 'Mary and Max', NW Film Center:

https://nwfilm.org/films/mary-and-max/