By james art Adam Elliot’s latest film, Memoirs of a Snailis a stunning addition to the director’s slate and the best reason to go to the cinema this week. Without spoiling anything, see it on the big screen right now and be transported to a world not entirely different from our own. It’s a piece of work that’s both raw and polished, funny and terribly sad (often at the same time), and one of the most beautiful films of 2024. Featuring the voices of Sarah Snook (Inheritance), Cody Smith-McPhee (The power of the dog), Jackie Weaver (The animal kingdom), Eric Bana (Chopper, Hulk), and Nick Cave, the musician and writer who wrote The proposal (2005), Memoirs of a Snail is nothing short of a miracle, a claymation feature film for adults that ironically has more life in it than most of this year’s action films.
Memoirs of a Snail follows Elliott’s earlier works, which include well-known and highly regarded efforts such as the 22-minute Harvey Crumpet (2003) and Elliott’s first feature film, Mary and Max (2009). Like the world created by the previous films, Memoirs of a Snail it’s yellowish, gnarled, but actually quite nice to look at. The details of the film are rendered by hand without unnecessary CG embellishments. Every texture is thought out meticulously, especially in the subtle character traits that convey huge emotions in minor movements. If the film had no story, it would still be worth the effort to sit back and admire the artistry that went into making it.
Memoirs of a Snail takes its characters and audience through the emotional wringer
The film’s Claymation animation does the heavy lifting
With such a talented cast lending their diverse voices to these living, breathing, potato-like figures, Elliott honors their work with a script that’s as good as the animation. Memories of a Snail introduces audiences to the colorful world of 1970s Melbourne, Australia. The film follows Grace Poodle (voiced as a child by Charlotte Belsey and older than Snook), who lives with her brother Gilbert (Mason Litsos and then Cody Smith-McPhee) and their father Percy (Dominic Pinon, best known for collaborating with Jean -Pierre Jeunet), a French alcoholic juggler and busker whose career is derailed by an accident that leaves him a paraplegic. The twins’ mother dies during childbirth, which hangs over the film in many ways. Specifically, Grace’s budding interest and obsession with snails. This is manifested in the gathering of the creatures towards the hat she wears, full of stalked eyes.
Throughout their childhood, Grace was repeatedly bullied for her malacological interests and cleft palate, which the children, in their horrible way, took as some sort of weakness. But these traits, along with her indomitable spirit, make her a noble figure for Eliot to burden the audience with; someone viewers want to find joy in. however Memoirs of a Snail finds ways to throw curveballs at Grace (and through her, the audience), relentlessly placing her in circumstances where any ounce of happiness can be taken away in an instant. But it’s not all terrible, as she has her brother Gilbert, a budding arsonist who loves his sister. Together, they are twin flames who protect each other and make life’s uncertainties a little easier to manage—at least for a while.
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Percy dies suddenly, leaving the twins separated and transferred to other families. Grace finds herself in the care of swingers who often leave Grace alone to pursue her sexual inclinations. Gilbert, on the other hand, is in a much worse situation. He is sent to a fundamentalist family of fruit growers who seem to take pleasure in mistreating their adopted son. Despite circumstances that can only be described as cruel, Grace and Gilbert communicate through letters, cinvading her privacy and keeping the possibility of a reunion alive and well in her mind. Grace’s life in Canberra may not be as upsetting as Gilbert’s in Perth, but she begins to develop a penchant for collecting snail-related items she finds.
Everywhere Memoirs of a Snail,Eliot expertly connects the interests and behavior of the characters with objective correlates, creating a world full of poetic resonances and establishing a cosmic sense of the creator’s hand (Eliot). In a film by a lesser director or someone who lacked the ability to control every aspect of the production, these connections would still be present, but absent. Here they create a comprehensive worldview that deserves as much praise as the craft. For Grace, snails in their shells are more than an obsession; they are an analogy of her life turning more and more inward. But as her life moves inexorably from one experience to the next, she meets characters who will each leave their mark—for better or for worse.
Memoirs of a Snail balances tragedy with heart
The film strikes the perfect balance between relative happiness and sadness
Later, when Grace becomes a teenager, she befriends a vivacious woman named Pinky (Weaver). Her resilience in the face of surviving two different husbands and a table-dancing mishap that took off her namesake’s finger is the closest thing to it Memoirs of a Snail comes to give Grace a friend. Pinky is someone with whom Grace can really be herself and slowly come out of her shell. Still, the circumstances never change a dime, and there’s a nice bit of change left in the film, showing that Elliot plans to put Grace through the wringer for a while longer before any real sense of respite emerges.
At some point, the misery becomes too much to bear. Scene after scene, the audience meets fantastically strange characters, from those that Grace tries to befriend, to those that simply put themselves in her way to see what happens. Any slight increase in emotions stubbornly follows trouble. From the mildly dark to the downright grotesque, Elliott seems to revel in how many odd combinations of character traits and behaviors he can muster. Sometimes, though not often, Memoirs of a Snail i feel like it’s not so much about how much grace can take, but more about what the audience can take.
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But just when the film seems like an exercise in clay-based sadism, a brief moment of humor will cut through the tension and rekindle the audience’s interest in the ongoing travails of poor Grace, her brother Gilbert, and the idiosyncratic eccentrics who, by the end of the film, will be remembered with tenderness as well as family members. Elliott plays sadness with a heavy hand and has an eye for specific personal affronts, but he’s just as adept at deploying humor as he is pain.Memoirs of a Snailin tone, finds a superbly pleasing balance and never commits the madness of sticking to one emotional register. Elegantly, different feelings sit side by side in these clay creations. Death can be funny, love can be sad, and Elliott, who has perfected his craft, generously offers every kind of emotion under the sun.
Memoir of a Snail is now in theaters.
A bittersweet memoir by a melancholic woman named Grace Pudel – a collector of snails, romance novels and guinea pigs.
- Director
- Adam Elliott
- Date of issue
- October 25, 2024
- Cast
- Sarah Snook, Eric Bana, Jackie Weaver, Cody Smith-McPhee, Dominique Pinon, Magda Shubansky, Paul Kapsis, Tony Armstrong, Mason Litsos, Charlotte Belsey, Davy Thompson, Selena Brennan, Jub Clerk, Luke Elliott, Nick Cave, Bernie Clifford, Craig Ross
- Writers
- Adam Elliott
- Execution time
- 94 minutes
- character(s)
- Grace Poodle, James the Magistrate, Pinkie, Gilbert, Percy Poodle, Ruth Appleby, Ian/Narrell, Ken, Young Gilbert, Young Grace, Ben Appleby, Annie, Sperm Clinic Nurses, Scruffy Guard/Heartless Headmaster, Bill Clarke, Owen Appleby , Craig
- Brilliant artistry
- A touching story with charmingly odd details
- Superb voice acting
- Too much despair at times