So many letters to define Mary and Max, and not enough words to describe them...

Rating: 10/10 (25 August 2016)

Every once in a while, there's a movie you expect to 'watch' but what happens after the very first minutes goes beyond the idea of watching. I had "Mary and Max" pending in my watch-list for a long time mainly because of its presence in the Top 250. So, when I found it in the DVD store, I thought time had come to give it a shot. Well, let's just say that after five minutes, I was entranced by its beautiful ugliness and if I had one intimate conviction is that it would not disappoint me and that every second of it was to be savored like a tiny bite of my favorite chocolate.
That film is Adam Elliott's "Mary and Max", and it's so profoundly and deeply human that it drowns you into its story. It's about two persons who couldn't have been more opposite, age-wise and geographically, but they have in common a few things like their initials, their passion for chocolate, for Smurfs-like creatures named Noblets and last but not least, they're outcasts. Mary is a shy, insecure Australian girl with an odd birth mark looking like poo stain on her forehead, that she wears glasses and is a bit plump completes the ungrateful portrait. But the tone of the film never mocks her, she's not that way because she's supposed to incarnate a stereotype, her personality is the consequence of her insecurity which is a consequence of her appearance. Anyone who's been an insecure child can relate to Mary, and one who was lucky enough to meet beauty standards can at least feel for her, because people like Mary tend to develop a rare virtue in our individualistic world: she care for others, she's empathetic.
She's also extremely curious and naive like any child, and just to fulfill her curiosity, she opens an American phone book and rips a page that contains the address of Max Horowitz, a New Yorker, she sends him a letter, asking a few random question about babies and the stuff she likes. Little did she know that she had just started a twenty-year correspondence and one of the most beautiful on-screen friendships, and friendships are never as believable and solid as when they're slowly built by the passing of time, and step by step, the letters Max will receive from Mary will become an indispensable part of his life. And we're not even shocked that this is going between a little girl and a man in his forties because for one thing, their exchanges exude sincerity. Later, Max finally reveals he's got Asperger's syndrome, which finally explains why so many things make him irritable, including a few letters from Mary.
These letters occupy the most of the film, but they never, absolutely never, feel as fillers, they help us to learn more about the evolution (or lack of) of Mary and Max and the people who populate their world. Mary's father is an ordinary man whose work in a tea bag factory inspired Mary's dream to marry an Englishman named Earl Grey and live in Scotland with her nine babies. Mary's mother, an alcoholic kleptomaniac, is the kind of mother you wouldn't even wish for your bully, and if it wasn't for a providential slip, Mary would never have read Max' first letter and know how much they had in common, in fact, she would have never known him, period.
There is something very true to life in these letters, they tell you more than Mary or Max' lives, they're about the cathartic effect of writing, having someone we can share our problems with as a tool to overcome our own weaknesses. And many people with lamentable social skills have a tremendous capability for expressing their emotions, because they spent so much time in long introspection they know exactly what's going inside. In a way, Mary and Max' blessings came from their curses, and in some of the film's most heartbreaking moments, they both recall the worst episodes of their life, especially when they were bullied. There's a scene with a kid taking Mary's sandwich and peeing on it, and yes, kids can be that cruel. A victim of bullying will never understand the bully's delight in violence because of this empathy. And having discussed about bullying lately, the film sure hit a sensitive chord.
Max is a pacifist, but he's not much an empathetic man, more of the apathetic kind, he lives his life according to his nature and never questions his social disabilities, like anyone, he has a past with its burdens and its positive stuff, he regularly sees a therapist Dr. Hazelhof and tries more or less to give a meaning to his life, and what better than goals to achieve this. Basically, Max' got three goals in life: collecting all the Noblets, having chocolate supply for life and having a friend, not an imaginary one. This is the effect Mary has on Max and through an extraordinary reciprocity, even Max positively influences Mary. Well, by that point of the film, it either comes to go further and spoil it or just invite anybody who thinks he or she's seen all in movies to watch this magnificent little gem. I was shocked that it didn't make it in the Oscar nominations because it IS a powerful existential masterpiece.
It has the upbeat poetry of "Amélie", the dark humor of "About Schmidt" (which was also about an old curmudgeon venting his anger through a letter he sent to a little African boy) but the result is admirably original because the letters make the plot, they're not accessories to it and because the ending is just perfect. I'm not saying it's sad or it's happy, it's just that after one hour and half of this existential ride, we have an emotionally rewarding ending.