Hallo. Recently I discovered and watched this Australian claymation movie, “Mary and Max” (2009).
I was floored by it. I loved it, and lamented that it never had a cinema distribution in my country (and many others). I would have loved to watch it on the big screen.
There were two (or rather three) particular moments in that movie* that truly hit me hard and touched me deeply. Other people here have seen it?
I consider it one of the best movies I have seen in a long time.
*Mary crying all over her letter as she tells how she is bullied at school, and asking for help… Mary standing there in her empty house with the rope around her neck, swallowing a handful of Valium (that scene, with “Que Será, Será” – I have seldom seen such a great symbolic representation of someone in the deepest pit of extreme depression)… The ending oh Christ the ending…
I absolutely loved it. I’m kinda glad I watched it at home rather than in a theater, so no one witnessed me turning into a sobbing mess.
Also, it kind of blew my mind that Philip Seymour Hoffman was the voice of Max. It sounded absolutely nothing like him. The movie has great voicework all around.
I found it, or rather it found me, from being recommended by Netflix. Like it so much that I watched the whole thing again the very next day (I rarely watch movies twice). It is an absolute crime that this film wasn’t nominated for a best animated or foreign film Oscar! I think the key problem was the combination of a decidedly adult story with what is considered a decidedly ‘childish’ medium (Claymation).
The only thing about it that bothered me, and it wasn’t the movie’s fault, was by the time I saw it the music in it was already ingrained in my head from those stupid Apple commercials!