Molluscs have heroic status in Melbourne animator Adam Elliot’s new stop-motion film, Memoir of a Snail. Source: Australian Catholics.
Elliot won an Oscar for his short film Harvey Krumpet. His animation style is stop-motion, and he uses clay models, giving his films a distinctive look, and combined with his idiosyncratic characters and their stories, something of a unique position in animation.
His visual world is dark, often misshapen with touches of the sinister, a great deal of sadness and rare moments of joy.
The memoir belongs not to snails but to snail collector Grace Pudel (told by Snook, who is able to engage the audience completely). Grace, sad following the death of her good friend Pinky (Weaver at her best), has a vast number of collectable snails on her shelf and also cultivates actual snails, especially Sylvia to whom she confides her story.
It is a sad story.
Grace’s mother dies giving birth to Grace and her twin brother, Gilbert (Smit-McPhee). There are some happy moments with their eccentric French father, Dominique Pinon, an animator who falls on hard times.
The twins are separated in different foster homes with different philosophies. They might be described as 21st-century Dickensian. Grace is sent to a hippy, freethinking couple, while Gilbert is sent to live with a fundamentalist religious family, with a horrendous mother, Ruth (brought frighteningly alive by Szubanski).
But, back to Pinky. She is a wonderful neighbour to Grace, but is suffering from dementia. She tries to warn Grace about the charming Ken (Armstrong) who courts Grace but has his own terrible secret.
By this stage, Grace finishes telling her sad story to Sylvia.
While Elliot constantly reminds viewers that so much of life is sadness and suffering, the film is not without hope.
Some of the dialogue is witty. And there are some very happy cultural references, the books that the young Grace and Gilbert read, including Lord of the Flies, and, twice, the family watching The Two Ronnies with delight.
Review by Fr Peter Malone MSC, Jesuit Media
Memoir of a Snail: Voices of Sarah Snook, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Jacki Weaver, Magda Szubanski, Dominique Pinon, Eric Bana, Nick Cave, Adam Elliot, Tony Armstrong and Paul Capsis. Directed by Adam Elliot. 94 minutes. Rated M (Mature themes, coarse language and sexual references)
FULL STORY
Memoir of a snail (Australian Catholics)
