Mary and Max

Mary and Max

By Jonathan Fisher, April 20th, 2009


Mary and Max is magical. No other way to describe it. It's an animated film, but I have a feeling that adults will identify with it, despite its misleadingly juvenile tone. Adam Elliot, the Academy Award winner for the short Harvie Krumpet a couple of years ago, has spent the better part of five years preparing and shooting this movie, and I think it's pretty remarkable that the movie maintains such a personal sense about it. The level of artistry present in Mary and Max's characters and setting is extraordinary -- the work must have been painstaking.

The film's plot is relatively simple, and a note at the beginning of the film assures us that it's 'based on a true story'. Mary (voiced as a child by Bethany Whitmore and as an adult by Toni Collette) is a young child living in Melbourne in 1976. She's lonely, has a hard home life with an alcoholic mother and depressed father, and is bullied at school. Randomly she begins a pen friendship with Max Horowitz (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), a resident of New York City who has problems with social interactions and an eating disorder. The film covers roughly twenty years in the friendship of these two characters, and we eventually learn that Max has Asperger's Syndrome. Mary grows up while Max remains almost exactly the same.

Max is just as lonely as Mary, but does he know that? One of his three goals in life is to 'have a real friend', but he speaks about it so abstractly, as if he couldn't possibly know what he's missing. Mary's letters are initially a blessing and a curse in his life. On one hand, her letters are a form of connection with another human being that is less confrontational for him than the real world, but on the other, often her questions about love and emotions cause anxiety attacks for Max.

For an animated film, Mary and Max deals with some hefty issues -- depression, alienation, and mental illness. Adam Elliot says that Max is based on a real-life pen friend that he had who also had Asperger's Syndrome, which explains why Mary and Max displays so much empathy and understanding of people with mental illness. Don't think that Mary and Max is a downer, though. Elliot balances the darker elements of the film with humour and sophistication, and for a film with a gothic feel, Mary and Max's ending is, in its own way, a happy one.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman's voice work as Max is outstanding. Most believe, correctly, that Hoffman is one of the best actors around, but this is his first foray into voice work. He brings a lot of empathy to the character, as well as some pretty neat comic timing. Vocal performances don't get a lot of credit, and when an impressive one comes up, it deserves singling out.

Technically, Mary and Max is first-rate, and Elliot and co. should be a lock for an Oscar nomination next year for Best Animated feature. In the end, I came to care for these two little plasticine figures, I really did. So many movies about people with disabilities present their disability as a problem to overcome or solve. Mary and Max is the first movie I've seen the have the audacity to suggest that everyone, including disabled people, is fine just the way they are.