MARY AND MAX. Created with Extraordinary Sensitivity

The world created by Adam Elliot in Mary and Max is steeped in greys and gloomy shades. Nine-year-old Mary (Toni Collette) lives in the remote Australian countryside. She has no friends — not even acquaintances. Every day she eagerly awaits her favorite cartoon, The Noblets, which she watches in the company of the chicken she secretly keeps. Her father is an eccentric who prefers to stay in his shed, where he stuffs dead animals he finds on the highway. Her mother is a repulsive alcoholic and thief, incapable of showing even a trace of empathy. Her addiction has driven her into pathology and destroyed everything good within her.

Next door lives a legless neighbor suffering from agoraphobia who hasn’t left his apartment in decades. Mary is doomed to loneliness and boredom. Yet her head is full of questions, and her imagination often carries her far from home.

And where, she wonders, are people always happy and all-knowing? Of course — in America. So Mary grabs a phone book, copies down a random American address, and sends a letter.

It reaches Max Horovitz (voiced by Philip Seymour Hoffman). He is perhaps the most neurotic and dissatisfied person on Earth. A forty-four-year-old introvert, a chronic pessimist, and a bundle of frustrations. Morbidly obese, addicted to chocolate, and a long-time patient of a psychiatrist. Max first lost his faith in God — raised in an orthodox Jewish family, he converted to atheism — and later lost faith in humanity, for which he feels nothing but disgust. He fears and avoids touch. A bitter, seemingly defeated man, reluctant to any change.

His visits to the psychiatrist and to Overeaters Anonymous have long since turned from chances of salvation into a depressing routine. Only the unexpected letter from the nine-year-old girl from Australia heralds a revolution in his life.

Mary and Max begins quite innocently, maintaining a warm, ironic tone. There is, of course, a sense of stagnation, but not an unbearable one. The humorous opening monologue of the narrator bathes this world in a nostalgic aura. Mary’s town is a peculiar place, not without its local color and personality. Max’s New York, on the other hand, is a deserted, lifeless city, resembling a vast cemetery more than the unofficial capital of the world. The title character rarely leaves his sparsely furnished apartment — he sits at a bus stop, goes to the store for his essential chocolates, trips over the legs of the homeless, and cleans cigarette butts off the street. This is his retirement; his way of waiting for death.

The exchange of their first letters allows us to peek into both characters’ pasts — into their worlds of dreams and hidden fears. Until now, neither has ever had the chance to confess their desires or needs to anyone. Max finally gets to look at his life from a new perspective, to take stock of his existence. Writing letters and describing himself proves therapeutic — far more effective than all his sessions with psychiatrists combined. Mary, in turn, finds her first friend in Max — and vice versa. For the girl, he represents the longed-for presence of someone from the outside world, and their correspondence becomes, in a way, the fulfillment of her dream to escape the dreariness of her small town. Both characters are meticulously written — endowed with depth, flaws, peculiar traits, and psychological credibility. Rarely do animated films offer such an exhaustive study of personality.

Elliot’s film belongs to the very small subgenre of the epistolary film. It is narratively unconventional and applies this structure in an uncompromising way. Throughout most of the movie, we hear letters read in voiceover, accompanied by illustrative imagery. In the remaining parts, we hear the voice of a third-person narrator. By juxtaposing these two narrative threads, the filmmakers evoke a wide range of tones — from slapstick humor to irony, sarcasm, grotesque, and deeply moving tragedy.

Mary and Max is an animation written and directed with extraordinary sensitivity and precision — one that even Woody Allen, in his best years, would not be ashamed to have made.

Just as the title characters evolve over the span of several years, the story itself matures alongside them. It moves away from innocence toward a drama built on solid foundations — unafraid to tackle heavy, decidedly unchildlike themes such as sexuality, depression, unflinching portrayals of alcoholism, and even suicide attempts. Mary and Max is a successful narrative experiment and, after a certain point, a film for somewhat older children.

In creating his world and the physical appearance of his characters, Elliot employs caricature and exaggeration. It is a vision that is at times depressive and bleak, yet culminates in a brilliant, inspiring, and paradoxically beautiful ending. It is a film full of formal extremes, seemingly detached from reality, striving to confront the nightmare of existence and offer an antidote to it.

Beneath the surface of satire, Mary and Max hides serious questions, fears, and phobias. It is a vision full of exaggeration and stylistic eccentricities — yet at its core lie vast reserves of human emotion.