2009 seemed to be a strong year for Australian film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, I was falling over myself to see both 'Mary and Max' and 'Van Diemen's Land', which I observed as unusal behaviour for myself as I generally avoid Australian cinema (it tends to upset me, especially when I see a Australian film and a New Zealand film on the same day, i.e. 'Somersault' and 'In My Father's Den' on the same day, I was very very upset). Both films had strong word-of-mouth and both had some of the nicest filmmakers I spoke to at the festival, and both showed up in the 'Best of the Fest' day after closing night.
I didn't manage to catch 'Van Diemen's Land' but it is high on my list, one festival staff member described it as 'Deliverance without the arse rape' though the filmmaker did disagree. I did manage to catch 'Mary and Max', a film I had been anticipating since Adam Elliot and Melanie Coombs announced the project following the runaway success of 'Harvie Krumpet'.
'Mary and Max' is a heart-warming claymation love story of two friends who never quite see eye-to-eye but need each other more than they will ever need anyone else. Furthermore the film is thoroughly Australian, perhaps the most Australian a film has been since 'Walkabout' (from a very Australian producer), from the portrayl of the soul destroying suburbs to the small touches of the Cherry Ripe.
The painstaking attention to detail in the film and the amount of time spent on the project by the filmmakers embeddes the film with a love for the characters and style that is contagious, a similar quality achieved by the Wallace and Gromit films. A quality that is so specific to claymation and some hand drawn animation that Pixar has fallen just short of capturing.
If the film suffers anywhere, it is from the over reliance on narration, though a very well written narration, at times I felt the desire to hear more words from the mouths of Mary and Max themselves. This is a film you shouldn't miss and seeing it on the same day as a New Zeland film shouldn't upset.
