journal features

movie review - Mary and Max

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2011.09.27

This is a movie I've returned to several times in my mind since recently seeing it. This is a claymation-animated movie about a two people in distant English-speaking countries. One is a young girl in Melbourne, the other is a middle-aged obese asthmatic who's on The Spectrum. Through the course of several years, they maintain a correspondence based on Mary reaching out to Max by selecting his name from the (probably enormous) NYC phone book (when those were a thing). The story follows the struggles of the two outsiders, ranging from poverty and loneliness to a stint in an asylum due to accidental manslaughter.

I found this film note-perfect, with a steady and kind-hearted tone that showed the two "losers" to have more heart and ability than all the normies around them. Voiced with a superb cast, and clearly written by someone familiar with atypical neurology, it shows how some people indeed walk a sidewalk with more cracks than the paths of others. It gently shows compassion for the outsiders and shows the folly of those with supposedly more going for them.

Strongly recommended.

rand()m quote

On the endless saga of Rob Ford, mayor of Toronto; "It shouldn't have had to come to this. I'm so tired of getting up every morning and wondering, 'What will it be today?' I'm so tired of giving the benefit of the doubt again and again, only to be let down again and again.... Somewhere a responsible adult has to appear, draw a bright moral line, tell the truth and say unequivocally what won't be tolerated. Somebody has to do the right thing."

—Denzil Minnan-Wong