I’m in awe of what Academy Award winner (for his short Harvie Krumpet) Adam Elliot can do with adult stop-motion animation. His storytelling is quirky and accessible, as shown in his second feature (after Mary and Max), Memoir of a Snail.
This is a heartfelt story drawn from personal experiences. It follows a loner named Grace Prudel (voiced by Sarah Snook) who befriends an older woman. Grace is a misfit who collects ornamental snails and loves books. At a young age, through adverse circumstances, she’s separated from her twin brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee). The pair are farmed out to different families many Australian states apart. Grace falls into a spiral of anxiety and despair.
Hardship appears to be her lot, but hope emerges when she connects with an ageing woman called Pinky (Jacki Weaver). Pinky embraces life on her terms and remains determined through adversity. In time, her words of wisdom rub off on Grace, who tells her story to a humble garden snail named Sylvia.
The protagonists here are outsiders, as in all Elliot’s films. Memoir of a Snail is infused with light and shade. Elliot connects to his audience by layering pathos with humour, reflecting the darkness and joy of everyday life. Elliot drew upon what he calls the “semi-hoarding” of his mother; and the colourful life of a friend, who was also a collector and told enthralling anecdotes, to inform his screenplay. The result is compelling. You never know where Memoir of a Snail will head next and that’s a positive. It often surprises by changing direction.
Elliot has top-tier talent to voice the characters. Sarah Snook is the glue that binds it together as the out of sorts Grace Prudel, opposite Kodi Smit-McPhee as Gilbert. Jacki Weaver brings attitude and resolve to Pinky, while Magda Szubanski is cast as a gay conversion therapy leader.
The look and feel of Elliot’s films are as potent as their storylines. Memoir of a Snail has involved eight years’ work, with no CGI. Every object in the film is real. More than 7,000 individual items were handcrafted over nearly a year. Each prop, set and character has been handcrafted by a team of artists and technicians using clay, plasticine, silicone, wire, paper and paint. Fire is made from crumpled yellow and red cellophane, tears from glycerine and water from a mix of clear plastic and lubricant. Smoke is cotton wool and raindrops are the bubbles from bubble wrap. Seven animators worked 10 hours a day over 32 weeks to animate frame-by-frame the 310,000 individual movements needed to create the 94-minute film.
Elliot was born with a hereditary shake, which he has incorporated into his aesthetic. While crafting Memoir of a Snail, he had signs throughout the studio that read Chunky Wonky. That meant that every asset had to look flawed and asymmetrical, as if made in a hurry or by someone who was drunk. The result is another extraordinary piece of filmmaking and a storyline that is engaging and left of centre.
There is so much going on and so much to see, I’m driven to see Memoir of a Snail again very soon. It’s the work of a real auteur, whose originality stamps him as one of a kind.
Alex First
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Alex First is a Melbourne based journalist and communications specialist. He contributes to The Blurb on film and theatre.
