Director/Screenplay/Production Design – Adam Elliot, Producers – Adam Elliot & Liz Kearney, Photography – Gerald Thompson, Music – Elena Kats-Cherin, Animation Supervisor – John Lewis, Visual Effects Supervisor – Braiden Asciak. Production Company – Arenamedia.
Voices
Sarah Snook (Grace Pudel), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Gilbert Pudel), Jackie Weaver (Pinky), Magda Szubanski (Ruth Appleby), Tony Armstrong (Ken), Charlotte Belsey (Young Grace), Mason Litsos (Young Gilbert), Eric Bana (James the Magistrate), Bernie Clifford (Owen Appleby), Nick Cave (Bill Clarke), Paul Capsis (Ian and Narelle), Dominique Pinon (Percy Pudel)
Plot
Grace and Gilbert Pudel grow up as twins. After the death of their father, they are fostered out. Grace is sent to Canberra to live with a childless couple. Finding an inability to make friends, she retreats and collects snail items, wanting to be one herself. Gilbert, who desires to be a fire-eater, is sent to live with Applebys who belong to a separatist religious community and run an apple farm in Perth. Grace and Gilbert both write to one another and dream of being reunited. As she grows up, Grace befriends the aging, highly eccentric Pinky and finds a kindred soul. Grace then meets the leaf blower Ken and the two are married.
I first encountered the films of Australian animator Adam Elliot with Mary and Max (2008). It was a wonderfully eccentric film about the odd relationship by mail between a young girl and a middle-aged man with Asperger’s. I raved about Mary and Max to everybody I knew but the film never seemed to gain much traction beyond festival audiences. Before that, Elliot appeared with a trilogy of shorts, Uncle (1996), Cousin (1998) and Brother (1999), all of which concern dysfunctional families beset by tragedies, eccentric family members who lead lonely lives and characters with various mental/physical disabilities. However, it was the short film Harvey Krumpet (2003), about a man born with Thalidomide mutations and suffering from Tourette’s Syndrome, that won Adam Elliot much acclaim, including an Academy Award for Best Animated Short. Memoir of a Snail is Adam Elliot’s second feature-length film.
Memoir of a Snail drops us back into Adam Elliot’s unique world of Claymation, eccentric characters and wry, bittersweet observations on life. There is a number of similarities between the characters in Mary and Max and here – the central figure of the young girl who suffers from an inability to socialise and make friends; the mail correspondence that continues for years; the young girl’s making a single friend with somebody who defies all social norms.
The surprise about Adam Elliot’s films is that he uses a highly fantastical style – exaggerated Claymation figures and sets – to tell what are otherwise very realist biographical tales. You could easily imagine versions of Mary and Max and Memoir of a Snail that were shot in live-action with actors. However, doing so would make them completely different stories. Here it is the case where the very act of telling the story in the style that Elliot employs is what makes the film as unique as it is.
Brother and sister Gilbert (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee) and Grace (voiced by Sarah Snook)
As usual, Elliot outfits the film with an appealing cast of eccentrics – from the bizarre religious rituals of the autocratic Ruth and the Appleby family and Gilbert’s defiance; to Grace’s adopted parents, the swingers Ian and Narelle; the father, the French clown with a habit for scratch lotto tickets; and especially the Jacki Weaver voiced Pinky, a full blown eccentric that it is sad to watch as she falls into aged decline – one of the most tragic parts of the film. It all comes together in Elliot’s uniquely bittersweet way and reaches a very satisfying ending.
Memoir of a Snail is a work of genius in terms of its artistry. From the very opening where the camera pans through piles of junk to show the credits, the film comes uniquely handcrafted in its design. Everything from Grace’s collection of snail trophies and appropriated items to Adam Elliot’s approximation of the banality of Australiana comes with unique colour, all added to in the distinctive design scheme that shouts out being an Elliot film the moment you see it.
