Film Review: Mary & Max

08 Oct 2009

In Mary and Max, Australian director Adam Elliot uses the unconventional medium of ‘claymation’ to retell the true story of two penpals' interactions over 20 years.

Mary Daisy Dinkle (voiced by Toni Collette) – a lonely, chubby 8-year-old who lives in suburban Melbourne with her alcoholic mother and taxidermy-obsessed father – finds a random name in the phone book. Enter Max Horowitz (voiced by Phillip Seymour Hoffman), an obese 44-year-old Jewish man with Asperger’s Syndrome who resides in Manhattan, and whose only human interaction is at ‘over-eaters anonymous’ or with his elderly blind Chinese neighbour.

Mary spends her days trying to understand the world she is within, while Max spends his days trying to avoid the world he can’t understand. Narrated by Australian icon Barry Humphries, this film is a visual masterpiece of brown and grey, and superbly crosses the barriers of age, culture and social unease.

WORD: SARA BOYCE