Mary and Max

Mary and Max

Today as I browsed through the movie channels, I stopped by at Sony Pix to only thankfully catch a movie that got added to my “lessons in friendship” chapter in the book of my life.

To begin with this movie, unlike many other animated movies does not  have colours or graceful, pretty looking or charming animated characters, but the essence is what I held onto. The beauty of the narration and the simply put script made the movie very relatable.

So this movie, for me, began ( Coz as always I hardly catch a movie on time, Just missed few minutes) where the narrator tells how Max and Mary become pen pal friends. Max, much elder to Mary (let’s say some 20 years) stays in New York, America and Mary a young girl of 8 stays in Australia. As Max replies to the first letter sent by Mary, he wonders how many days would it take for the letter to reach Australia.

The letter before reaching Mary is read by her mother who crumples it and throws it into the dustbin. But as destiny has it, just when the mother goes to the garbage van to throw the trash, the trash falls, and the chicken which Mary has as a pet grabs the crumpled letter which her mother had thrown.

Mary is then shown enthusiastically reading Max’s letter with torchlight under her sheet and immediately writes back to him. The tone of her language too sweetly innocent and her expression too adorable. As she ends her letter she writes:

"PS: Have you ever been teased?

PSS:  My eyes have become wet and they make my letters soggy."

As Max receives her letter the question of ever having been bullied strikes him hard, as he remembers his childhood days of being bullied and teased for being a Jew.

He then, very beautifully types a letter to Mary saying that the next time someone teases her about her birthmark on her forehead, she should tell him that it is made up of chocolate and that will enable her an entry into the heaven where she would have lots of chocolate.

As Mary reads the letter, she is delighted to see Max’s reply and in her next letter writes to Max saying that the Bully began to cry as she uttered these words, and she is no more teased.

In the next letter Mary innocently asks questions from Max about how babies are born, tells him that she would like to be loved and often thinks of marrying a guy called Damien who lives across her street.

Max gets an anxiety attack and soon goes into depression when he reads Mary’s question on love and if he had ever been loved? A period of 8 months lasts when Mary is shown waiting for Max’s letter, and instead of the money she used to save to meet him one day, begins to save for cosmetic surgery as she feels she is too ugly. She is shown wondering that maybe his typewriter’s ink finished, or may be the entire Unites States’ ink finished.

All this happens as Max is hospitalized for his depression.

As Max recovers, after a while he writes back to Mary telling her the reason of his being away for that long. In the meanwhile he wins a lottery ticket and buys a chocolate factory. Along with their letters they are also shown exchanging photos, delectable treats and chocolates with each other. Max in his letter tells Mary that he has Aspergers and he calls himself an Aspie and likes being one too. He shares with her how confusing he finds the world at times and how difficult it is for him to comprehend not only his own but people’s emotions as well. He also tells her that there are times when he really wishes to cry, but tears just don’t come. “I cry when I cut onions, but that won’t count” he tells her. He tells her that he has made a word calls confuzzle: When everything is confusing and puzzling at the same moment.

And that is when he asks ( one of my fav dialogues from the movie) :
“Do you have a favorite sounding word?”

Mary with her next letter, intentionally cries, and in a bottle saves her tears and tells Max to use them whenever he feels like crying.

In the mean time, as Mary joins college, Max is shown getting obese. Also Mary loses both her parents one after other. She eventually marries the guy Damien who lives across her street. Takes up her higher studies in the field of Mental Disorders, and publishes her research titled ‘Dissecting Aspergers Syndrome’ with Max being her primary case. She is applauded by one and all, and her thesis gets published into a book.

In her next letter, she signs her very first book to Max and tells him that she’ll be coming soon to New York to meet him. Max on receiving the book, gets terribly agitated and hurt. He types a letter and then crushes it. Just when Mary steps out of her home with her luggage she reads Max’s letter which has the letter “M” broken from the typewriter. Her world collapses and so does she. She tears apart all her published books, goes into depression, forgets her academic life and knits woollen pom poms lifelessly. In the meanwhile her husband writes a letter to her saying that he has fallen in love with his Pen pal and would now be staying there. This all the more shatters her life.

In between Mary paints a can and writes “I’M SORRY” and mails it to Max.

As Max receives her can, he evades replying back to her for quite some time.

 And well what happens next?

For that you got to watch the movie my friends:)………

PS: Some beautiful bits of the movie have intentionally not been included, for I don’t want to spoil the fun of watching it.

PPS:  Sorry for such a loooong post:( 
PPPS: Here's some basic Wiki info I'd like to share:

Mary and Max is a 2009 Australian clay-animated black comedy-drama film written and directed by Adam Elliot and produced by Melanie Coombs. The voice cast included Philip Seymour Hoffman, Toni Collette, Eric Bana, Bethany Whitmore, with narration by Barry Humphries. The film premiered on the opening night of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.[2] The film won the Annecy Cristal in June 2009 from the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, and Best Animated Feature Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards in November 2009.