Director Adam Elliot returns to stop motion claymation with the highly anticipated follow-up to Mary & Max and Oscar-winning Harvey Krumpet with a brand new stop animation film Memoir of a Snail. The 94-minute epic is beautifully handmade with not a single use of CGI used in any moment of this film. The 33-week film shoot was done at Melbourne’s Docklands Studios by local artists and voiced by some truly outstanding Australian voice talent. It has been a long time between films from Elliott and with the Oscar win under his belt thanks to Harvie Krumpet, the wait has definitely been worth it with Memoir offering a macabre look into isolation and the human experience of feeling like an outcast.
The story follows Gracie Pudel (Sarah Snook) who grows up developing an obsession with snails. She doesn’t look like everyone else and is happy reading books at her home with her brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who came to her aid whenever bullies at school would make fun of her. Due to her cleft palate, the more the world rejected Gracie, the more she retreated to her books and pet snails at home. When their mother passes away, their father leaves his job as a street performer and does his best to make a life for them and look after the kids. When a drunk driver renders him a paraplegic, the kids must tend to his new restricted abilities and after he passes away, are sent off to foster families on opposite sides of the country.
Gracie ends up in Canberra with a childless couple who love going to key parties, cruising around the world and really try to get Gracie involved in group sports (much to their dismay). Gilbert is sent to an apple farm in Western Australia with a family who lives off the grid and has their own religion, where he is trying to save enough money to move to Canberra and reunite with Gracie again. Gracie meets a retired exotic dancer Pinkie (Jacki Weaver) who is about to enter the retirement phase of her life and takes Gracie under her wing when she witnesses the kind-hearted soul that she is.
The majority of the movie is spent with Gracie telling the story of her life and why she is the way she is. Her obsession with snails thanks to its connection with her mother she wanted to continue when she passed, She becomes a hoarder inside her home when she couldn’t find love or acceptance in the world so she used items to fill that void. As Gracie navigates the world in her own unique way, we do go on a separate journey with Gilbert. His reluctance to buy into his adopted family’s beliefs about needing to wear magnets to keep the government away and his gradual acceptance of his homosexuality and the aftermath of this realisation is a harrowing look into trauma and how conversion therapy really can shape the future.
A lot has been said about the incredible artistry of this film, the majority of the setting is between Melbourne and Canberra, with a few funny jabs at each state and their differences littered throughout to entertain the locals. Seeing the city re-constructed in this claymation world goes beyond anything a computer-generated 3D artist could ever hope to do. The film is set in the 1980s and the streets of Melbourne, and what a typical house and housing commission flat looked like at this time has been beautifully crafted here, you can practically smell the cigarette smoke lingering in the lounge room.
Memoir of a Snail is a grim reminder that while life may not always go our way, there is hope in every situation we are put in. The seemingly never-ending positivity of Gracie, despite all that is forced upon her from a cruel and harsh world that doesn’t want her, is told with such brilliance, that it helps to elevate the film and with its mesmerising visuals, this is bound to become an Aussie classic.
