Mary and Max

Mary and Max (2009) is a stop-motion animated drama film written and directed by Adam Elliot, and produced in Australia. The film tells the deeply human story of an unlikely pen-pal friendship between Mary Daisy Dinkle, a lonely, socially awkward 8-year-old girl living in Melbourne, and Max Jerry Horovitz, a 44-year-old obese Jewish man with Asperger’s Syndrome living in New York. Their correspondence spans 20 years, capturing moments of humor, trauma, misunderstanding, and emotional growth. The film tackles heavy topics such as mental illness, addiction, loneliness, death, and social rejection—yet balances them with warmth, dark comedy, and tenderness. Visually, Mary and Max is entirely composed of intricately crafted claymation. The animation style is deliberately desaturated and monochrome in Max’s scenes, and muted brown-toned in Mary’s, enhancing the emotional tone and bleak beauty of their worlds. The narration, provided by Barry Humphries, ties the narrative together with a storybook cadence. Toni Collette voices adult Mary, while Philip Seymour Hoffman gives a quietly devastating performance as Max. Eric Bana and Bethany Whitmore round out the cast in supporting roles. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009 as the opening night film—an unusual honor for an animated feature. It received strong critical acclaim, with praise directed at its emotional complexity, visual style, and sensitive portrayal of neurodiversity and isolation. It holds a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 83 on Metacritic, marking it as one of the highest-rated adult animated films of its time. Financially, Mary and Max was not a blockbuster, grossing around $1.7 million USD worldwide, constrained by its limited release and niche appeal. However, its modest earnings don’t reflect its long-term impact. The film became a cult classic, particularly among animation enthusiasts and mental health advocates, and continues to be shared through streaming and academic screenings. The film won Best Animated Feature Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards and Best Feature Animation at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. It also received numerous nominations and accolades across film festivals and critics’ circles, and is widely considered one of the greatest animated films made outside the Hollywood system. Mary and Max remains a masterclass in storytelling—bleak, beautiful, and brutally honest. It showed the world that stop-motion could tackle adult themes with greater emotional depth than most live-action films. Its legacy endures as a heartfelt exploration of human connection, told with clay, care, and unflinching compassion.