Not As Great As Expected!

Rating: Null/10 (22 April 2015)

Mary and Max had been a part of my movie collection from the very beginning, having landed in the list because I was following the IMDb Top 250 back then. Anyway, it's the very first time I've seen this film & a part of me keeps wondering why I didn't check it out earlier for I could have gotten rid of it sooner & would've retrieved some storage space on my disk.
The story of Mary and Max follows the two titular characters: one is an 8-year-old girl living a lonely life in Australia, other is a morbidly obese 44-year-old man living in America who struggles to form close bonds with people & has been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. The plot covers the unlikely friendship between these two pen-pals who understand each other better than anyone else.
Written & directed by Adam Elliot, everything about Mary and Max is unconventional, from the way its story is narrated to the manner its themes are addressed. Even its animation is neither hand-drawn paintings nor computer renderings but makes use of clay, or claymation as it's called. And while a lot of it is worthy of commendation, it's not a film that's everyone is going to enjoy or appreciate.
The entire story is told in voice-overs since we barely see these characters communicating with anyone verbally. The script is brilliantly written plus the themes of loneliness, anxiety, depression, isolation, friendship, Asperger syndrome & obesity are beautifully depicted. The stop-motion photography makes use of separate tints for separate place, sepia for Australia & grayscale for America and the level of detail is impressive.
What I also liked is how wonderfully it captures the entire hypocrisy of the society we live in & it's extremely evident when seen from Max's perspective. Editing deliberately keeps a dull pace to reflects their lives but after a point, it becomes unbearable. And music manages to soar in few scenes. Also, the voice cast is wisely chosen & all of them end up doing a good job in infusing more personality into their respective characters.
On an overall scale, Mary and Max is an art-house feature from Australian cinema that has a lot many great things going on and while the tone may seem depressing, it offers plenty of laughs along the way, doesn't matter if the humour is deadpan. The best thing about it is the two characters we have in Mary & Max plus the relaxed manner in which their friendship is progressed over the course of its runtime. Definitely worth a shot.