Mary and Max

Claymation

Director:  Adam Elliot

Australia (2009)--35 mm--80 minutes

English

Pleasingly demented and darkly comic, MARY AND MAX is a bittersweet, decidedly adult claymation fable of an improbable pen pal relationship between an unloved eight-year-old Australian girl and a middle-aged, morbidly obese Jewish New Yorker with Asperger's syndrome. Spanning twenty years, Mary and Max's correspondence covers every taboo topic from sex to religion, while surviving illness and shared loneliness. The letters between the naive misfit and ultimate nebbish are as roaringly funny as they are painfully candid. Mismatched as they are, their global connection poignantly endures. Lovingly directed by Oscar-winning animator Adam Elliot, and brought to life by the bravura voices of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Toni Collette, Barry Humphries and Eric Bana, MARY AND MAX is a compassionate tale of friendship between oddballs, and a triumph of visual panache. Opening Night Selection of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.