DVD review: Discover 'Mary and Max' for yourself

Courtesy of Icon Film

Starting with the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, Mary and Max has gone around the world, winning awards at various film fests and charming every one it comes in contact with. Of course, after all the hoopla and critical acclaim around the globe, Mary and Max received a very low-key direct-to-video release here in Amur-icah, where it sits in anonymity, waiting to be discovered one viewer at a time.

I'm here to tell you to go out and freakin' discover this film for yourself. It is a claymation film from Australia, and its not for kids, despite the cutesy premise and animated aesthetic. It starts out in Mount Waverly, Australia, circa 1976, where 8-year old Mary (Toni Collette, Little Miss Sunshine) is a chubby little girl with an awkward birthmark, drunk parents and no friends. She exists in a steadily sepia-toned world, with overcast skies reflecting her depressed life. And on the other side of the world in New York City is 44-year old Max (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Synecdoche, New York), an obese, atheistic Jewish man with no friends. He is prone to anxiety attacks, devours chocolate hot dogs on his way to overeaters anonymous, and exists in a steadily grey world, with overcast skies reflecting his depressed life. These two people become pen pals by chance, and they have a very interesting and tumultuous friendship for the next twenty or so years.

What's interesting is that Max has an overly literal and logical mine, which makes it tough for him to understand the world around him. He has trouble reading other people's facial expressions, has difficulty relating to people, has a lack of empathy, gets easily sidetracked and insists on repetition and order in his life. Throughout the film, he is diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, and he is told that people are working on a cure for this syndrome. This insults Max deeply because he doesn't feel like he needs curing - sure he gets crazy panic attacks so severe they require stints in mental hospitals, and its true that he struggles mightily with both social interactions and his own personal health, but why should be told that there's something wrong with him? From the outside, his life looks strange and different, but to him its just living. And when Mary comes along, he finds someone that accepts him for who he is.

Meanwhile Mary just has a depressing life, what with the Mom twisted on sherry and constantly degrading her daughter, to whom she explained that she had no siblings because she was an accident in the first place. And then there's emotionally distant Dad who spends his days working in a tea-bag factory and his nights in his shed, twisted on Bailey's and practicing taxidermy on dozens of little dead birds. Mary gets picked on by kids at school, and she has a crush on her stuttering neighbor Damien (Eric Bana, Chopper). In Max she finds that friend that she can confide in and get advice from and ask questions to, and it is a little crazy how the prospect of losing that friendship can throw her life into such turmoil.

Most of the story is told by a narrator and through the letters written by Mary and Max, and this coupled with the great looking claymation makes for a storybook kind of vibe. The opening is a great montage of shots of a sleepy little shrimping village in South Australia, with lots of close-ups of clay wastebaskets, mailboxes, cars and homes. Again, don't let this model village come to life fool you. You might want to bring the kids into the room to watch the cute animated movie, and then you'll scar them forever with scenes depicting death by formaldahyde, suicide by pills and hanging, electro-shock therapy and a bunch of creepy-looking stuffed birds. On second thought, bring the little ones around the TV and tell them its a Disney movie. And if you have Netflix Instant Watch, you can check it out there in glorious hi-definition.