Do you suffer anxiety attack when you attempt to write about something that is dear to your heart? An important childhood memory? An experience in a lifetime? Your favorite book? The most significant events that happened that may have shaped who you are?
Maybe it’s just me. This is why so far I have not been able to write about what happened at BlogHer this summer. Why I did not even mention my going alone to a dive bar in downtown Chicago to watch my favorite band The Boxer Rebellion. It meant too much for me to run the risk of potentially screwing the memory up by attempting to write it down.
Does this even make sense?!
I watched “Mary and Max” tonight. I cried so much over it that by the end there was a pile of Kleenex on the sofa next to me. In my usual fashion, I agonized over talking about it at all: What if you watch it and are disappointed because all my gushing is going to make you go into it with high expectations? But I HAVE TO talk about it. I am still awake because I cannot get Mary and Max out of my head. So welcome to my therapy session, Spill and Be Done with It.
Oh, and if you are going to watch the movie, remember you MAY hate it. There. Now we are safe from disappointment caused by high expectations…
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Mary and Max is a feature-length claymation created by Adam Elliot and team (who had won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film in 2003) and premiered on the opening night of the Sundance Film Festival in 2009. The plot is deceptively simple: Mary Daisy Dinkle (Toni Collette) is an 8-year old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne. Max Jerry Horowitz (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a 44-year-old obese Jewish atheist living in New York who also is later diagnosed to have Aspergers syndrome. Mary is awkward, neglected by her parents, unloved, and friendless. Max is, well, in a similar boat. Their lives intersected when Mary randomly picked Max’s name out of an American phone book to write a letter to. You see, Mary wanted to find out whether in America babies come from the bottom of a beer mug like they do in Australia. For 20 years they wrote and sent each other chocolate, with some interruptions, encouraging and supporting each other oftentimes without consciously doing so.
The movie is consisted to a large extent of the reading of the letters they write each other and of the narrator. Dialogues are kept to a minimum. Some of you will no doubt be delighted to know that the omniscient narrator was voiced by Barry Humphries (whose alter ego is none other than Dame Edna).
There are plenty professional reviews to be found via google search which saves me from total panic attack since I suck at writing reviews which require logics and persuasion. I am better at gushing. It is rather my feeble attempt at keeping what moved me in this movie alive via my remembering the bits and pieces. From the opening lines:
Mary Dinkle’s eyes are the color of muddy puddles. Her birth mark, the color of poop.
To the innocent, “nonsensical” questions Mary asked Max (“Do sheeps shrink when it rains?” “Do gooese get goose bumps?”). To Max’s literal answers to Mary’s questions and his straightforward sharing of his life view (“I like being an Aspie! It would be like trying to change the color of my eyes.”) To the parallel between Mary’s innocent questions and Max’s puzzlement over human behaviors (“He couldn’t understand why he was seen as the odd one while everyone else was considered normal. Humans were endlessly illogically. Why did they throw out food when there’re children starving in India?”)
I want to write down every single piece of these gems.
As in all other stop-motion feature films, Mary and Max is a labor of love. An incredible achievement of art, design, crafts, architecture, photography. More than the visual feast, it is an incredible feat that the story never turned saccharin; I half “expected” the movie to be a formulaic tale of triumph of two outsiders over their difficulties through finding each other in this lonely world. It is not warm and fuzzy.
I am in love with the writing by Adam Elliot. I drank in every word. In my usual crazed obsessive fashion, I envisioned myself swallowing the words whole so as to absorb them directly into my being.
Max: I asked my mother when I was four, and she said they [babies] came from eggs laid by rabbis. If you aren’t Jewish, they’re laid by Catholic nuns. If you’re an atheist, they’re laid by dirty, lonely prostitutes.
Mary: I am sorry to hear that you are fat. Mum says I am fat too and I am growing up to be a heifer… which I think is a type of cow. Maybe you should only eat things which begin with the letter of each day!
Narrator: He agrees with his favorite physicist [Guess who?] that there are only two things infinite: The universe. And men’s stupidity.
Like I said, I had this urge to take out a pen and paper fire up my laptop and jot down the letters word by word. I wanted to remember them. I wished, while I was watching the movie, that Adam Elliot had turned the letters into a book. Because he did not, I kind of panicked as the movie progressed as I could not memorize all the things that touched something deep inside my heart. (I am AWARE of how insane in the membrane this was…)
I still wish he would. Many reviews and blog posts mentioned the epitaph used for the movie:
God gave us our relatives; thank God we can choose our friends. —– Ethel Mumford
I don’t disagree that this is a major theme threaded throughout the film. However, ultimately the lesson, at least the one that I walked away with, that Max in his unconventional way has taught Mary is this…
Love yourself first.
Hi!!
Gr8 review… and indeed a well deserving movie… 🙂
Pen Pals Bonding very well covered… a story that slowly builds up and delivers at par…
Hi thank you for the kind words! It was a very moving movie that makes me think till this day.
I know this post is old, but ran across it from a google. Just watched this movie the other night, and LOVED IT!!! So sad, so heartwrenchingly beautiful at the same time.
Hi, thank you so much for coming back to leave this comment. I really appreciate it! And yes, till this day I still think of that movie from time to time. By the way, wrt. your id and the name of your blog, QUEEN is my fav! Freddie Mercury FTW! ^_____^
This is strange for me..I read a lot of blogs, but this is the first time i felt the need to post a comment on one. Or the first time i got into the mood to actually recognize that need, express it and fulfill it.
I just saw this movie, and it touched me so deeply I can hardly believe. I’ve been surfing the net after seeing it, in a search of reviews, opinions that would help me clarify my own experience of the movie. Minutes ago I ended up by chance on this page. I felt so surprised, grateful…and complete. I wanted to do what you did, to write about it, but couldn’t do it.
The words i would like to tattoo on my eyelids (to see them every time i blink) : “i forgive you because you are imperfect. i am imperfect too”. I won’t do that though, i’ll probably forget or ignore things that i learned now matter what i do..i am imperfect. Right now for example i am trying to remember another line, or at least a particular idea, but they just fly away and all i’m left with are the inexpressible feelings. I guess i’ll just have to let them be.
I’m training to be a psychotherapist by the way… and i have a long journey ahead of me. This movie, this post/blog, this comment i am writing..steps in that journey, and parts of my personal therapy. Thanks for sharing, and allowing others to do the same..
Thank you so much for letting me know that you got something out of my post. This is really one of the best rewards I could have hoped for. “I won’t do that though, i’ll probably forget or ignore things that i learned now matter what i do..i am imperfect. Right now for example i am trying to remember another line, or at least a particular idea, but they just fly away and all i’m left with are the inexpressible feelings.” That’s how I feel too and I get a feeling that many others feel the same way too. That was why I was stressed out actually when I was watching the movie because I KNEW I was going to forget all those lines that moved me so much at THAT moment. (Kind of silly, eh?) and why I often feel this urge to eat the pages with words that hit a cord within me (well figuratively of course). Best wishes in all your future endeavors. Somehow I get a feeling that you are going to be a great psychotherapist. Take care. Thank you again.
The biggest joy and happiness i found in life so far lies in the moments where i discover the same struggles, or the same feeling that lies within me in others..when it becomes so clear that despite our uniqueness, there is something in all of us that connects us..anyways. maybe i’ll start my own blog, i love the idea of labeling a post as “therapy session” and just writing things..i have another blog in my native language, but i can’t seem to commit to it, i constantly have in mind how the others will judge or understand me..i find that writing in english is more liberating for me, and the “therapy” label reminds me that i don’t have to worry about what others think, that i write for me..and that i have to “love myself first”
p.s. i cried too when i saw the movie, and now i read your post again.. some tears fell again..amazing that i am still moved
p.p.s. amazing…how strangers can touch me like that..a movie, a blogger..
p.p.p.s you were right..just .writing things feels so good 🙂 better than ruminating at theoretical stuff i learn
Hi, I am sorry that it took me until now to continue our conversation. (Not sure whether you intended for this dialogue to continue but hey, I am used to talking to myself. hence the blog…) Thank you again for the kind words and for sharing your thoughts. And yes I agree, I have been amazed again and again by the world of “strangers” that blogging has opened up for/to me. I like to theorize it thus: through the Internet, the pool of potential friends becomes infinite, and is no longer limited by geography (i.e. school, work, neighborhoods, commuter trains, etc.) and therefore the probability of finding someone who “gets” you becomes, theoretically, infinite as well. I highly recommend starting a blog if you are even thinking about it. Just go ahead and see where it takes you. Do drop me a line though if you do start blogging and of course is so inclined in sharing it with me. Happy New Year! Best regards, Lin
This has been on my movie list for. e. ver. Except we average about a movie a month, so it’s pretty slow going…Looks like I’m going to have to move this up to the top of my queue. Thanks for this. I love your insight, and I’m quite sure I’ll enjoy this film too.
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I hope you do enjoy it! Hopefully it helps take off some stress even if just for an hour!
I just finished looking at everything on that website. Mary and Max is now #1 on my Netflix que. Thank you so much! And about the difficulty of writing certain things, I can only speak about the traumatic events or the events that create guilt when we think of them. We three authors all hit a wall at such times when we were writing our book. Luckily, we each had the other two to guide us (sometimes kicking and screaming) through the process. We are eternally grateful for that.
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I have several drafts talking about events that bring up feelings of guilt too. I feel the need to talk about them so as to exercise the demon yet the process is indeed hard.
It’s uploading to my iPhone as I type this! Can’t wait! The trailer looks amazing!
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Fancy pants. 😉
All I write about are the things that move me. But then again, a stiff wind would move me. Very much like the subtitle of your blog, my blog is my therapy sessions. I’d go to a real therapist, but I can’t afford one. I’m on the DIY therapy program.
It sounds like a wonderful and charming movie! I’m adding to by Netflix.
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Yes! I am on DIY therapy too! 🙂
I never write about anything that has really shaped who I am. I can’t. I can’t seem to have it make any sense. It’s all gobbledygook.
I love your passion for “Mary And Max”
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I adore your gobbledygook.
OMG. Did you know that gobbledygook is a real word? I just realized that through Auto Correct!
That sounds really good – I will add it to my Netflix list.
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I hope you like it. *Keeping fingers crossed*
On my list now. Thank you.
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You are welcome. I hope you enjoy it!
Oh, I have been dying to ask you about your bar night with your favorite band, but I was suffering anxiety that I had given you too high of expectations!! Ah! I feel better now, I think.
This right here — “In my usual crazed obsessive fashion, I envisioned myself swallowing the words whole so as to absorb them directly into my being.” — makes me want to see the movie. Beautiful.
Thank you and the other awesome enablers for talking me into it. I had a blast! 🙂 I even talked to them and got pictures. (But the post would have looked like my David Sedaris post…. Neurotic and not pretty at all. LOL)