Mary and Max is not your typical Disney, Pixar cutesy kiddish cartoon. It is a clay animation production, similar to the what we have seen in Wallace and Gromit and Chicke Run.
The film is directed and produced by a talented Australian Adam Elliot and it won the feature film award in the 2009 Annecy International Animated Film Festival.
It is a touching story recounting the penpal relationship between Mary, a 8 year old girl from Australia and Max, an Asperger's suffering 44 year old man from New York. Asperger syndrome is an autism spectrum disorder, and people suffering from it has difficulties in social interaction, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests.
You may wonder what's so special about a story about this young girl and an old man and how interesting can it be but under the creative hands of the director, he was able to pen this story of a pen-relationship between two very different people with such a big age gap and from different continents. The story touches on many issues revolving friendship, psychiatry, trust and much much more.
I'm really glad I watched this, not sure if it was shown in the local cinmeas or not cos it was released in April this year, either I missed it or there wasn't much publicity or reviews.
I googled the director Adam Elliot and found out that he won a Best Animated Short Film Oscar back in 2003 for another clay-animated film titled Harvey Krumpet. I will definitely get the DVD.
Oh ya forgot to mention the casts of Mary and Max, the production feature credible Australian stars like Toni Collette and Eric Bana. In Harvet Krumpet, Geoffrey Rush was the voice over for the main character.
1 comment:
I would love to catch this animation movie too! I love Wallace and Gromit and anything made of playdough that moves and talk.
One lovely animation film I bought recently was Lost and Found. It was beautifully done.
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