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movie review - Mary and Max

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

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.