Mary and Max - Television Tropes & Idioms

Sometimes perfect strangers make the best friends...

A 2009 Australian clay-animated film written and directed by Adam Elliot. The emotionally powerful Mary and Max appears to have been overshadowed by such recent, better-known stop motions as Coraline and The Fantastic Mr. Fox, as well as the fact that it falls smack bang into the middle of the Animation Age Ghetto.

Set in the 1970-90's, and supposedly Very Loosely Based on a True Story, Mary and Max tells the story of a friendship between two unlikely pen pals: Mary, a lonely 8-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, and Max, an obese 44-year old man living in New York City who is eventually diagnosed as having Asperger's Syndrome. The movie follows the story of their life and friendship over the course of Mary's childhood and adulthood. What appears to start out as a solely blackly humourous story soon turns into something quite dark and often very depressing, dealing with everything from parental neglect, to insecurity, to bullying, to suicide.

This film provides examples of:

Abusive Parents: Mary's are mostly neglectful and preoccupied, though her mother also calls her fat and ugly.
The Alcoholic: Mary's mother, who is in denial about it.
Anachronism Stew
Asexual: Max, which makes it doubly funny that Mary asks him where babies come from in America.
Babies Ever After
Bi the Way: Probably the best way to describe Damien as he does show some genuine interest in Mary at times.
Big Applesauce
Big Eater: Max, although it only contributes to his obesity.
Billing Displacement: Toni Collette gets top billing for playing adult Mary despite only showing up during the final half-hour of the film. The narrator, Hoffman (Max) and Whitmore (Young Mary) have more lines than she does.
Birth Death Juxtaposition: Mary and her baby arrive to visit Max just after he's died.
Bittersweet Ending: Max forgives Mary and she comes to visit him for the first time with her newborn baby... only to find that he passed away, albeit peacefully, on the very morning that she arrives.
- And then Mary looks up to see that Max has laminated all of her letters and attached them to the ceiling in his home.
Black Comedy
Blind Without 'Em: Ivy, Max's neighbor.
Bottle Fairy: Mary's mother Vera. Oh so much.
Brainy Brunette: Mary fits the trope well, although her hair is closer to black.
Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Max unintentionally does this in his letters.
Max: "Do you have a pet kangaroo? When I was born, my father left my mother and me on a kibbutz. She shot herself with my uncle's gun when I was 6. Do you like chocolate hot dogs?"
Brutal Honesty: Max, occasionally, as a symptom of his Asperger's.
Cannot Tell a Joke: Max.
Chekhov's Gunman: Mary's disabled neighbour, who overcomes his agoraphobia just in time to save her from killing herself.
Crapsack World: Arguably. The world in which the characters live is far more grounded in reality than most PG-rated claymation works.
Deliberately Monochrome
- Closer to Splash of Color, actually.
Despair Event Horizon: Max hates Mary for publishing a book about Asperger's syndrome with him as the subject. Mary becomes incredibly depressed and then Damien leaves her for his pen-pal friend. Later, we see Mary trying to hang herself.
Did Not Do the Research: The film implies that Asperger's had just been discovered. In reality, Asperger's was discovered in 1944, but it did not get "re-discovered" and become a common diagnosis until the 1990's.
- Judges don't wear big powdered wigs in America. Adam Elliot said in the DVD commentary that he's very much aware of this.
Disappeared Dad: Max's father, who left his wife and son on a kibbutz, and is otherwise never mentioned again.
Driven to Suicide: Mary.
Everyone Hates Mimes: Except for someone with a mental disorder, apparently.
Finger in the Mail: Parodied. It's a key from Max's typewriter.
Getting Crap Past the Radar: The in-universe cartoon "The Noblets" could be considered this: take a close look at their designs...
Grave Humor: On the headstone for Mary's grandfather; "Born in a barn in the hills of Baronia/ lived a full life, then died of pneumonia." Later, similarly appropriate quips are written on those of her parents.
Happier Times Montage: One plays in the background as Mary prepares to commit suicide.
Heroic BSOD: Max and Mary each have one.
Hey, It's That Voice!: Waaait, Phillip Seymour Hoffman?
Hollywood Atheist: Averted. Max doesn't believe in God because he's "read many books that prove God is a figment of [his] imagination". Despite this, he doesn't really make much of a big deal about it.
I Just Want to Have Friends: Both of the main characters.
Informed Judaism: Averted. Although Max doesn't act particularly Jewish as an adult (except for wearing a yarmulke) it's clear he was a member of a fairly strict Orthodox sect as a kid.
Intergenerational Friendship
Interrupted Suicide: Mary's.
It's All Junk: After her Despair Event Horizon, Mary has her book pulped, even though it made her a famous psychologist.
Literal-Minded: Max. He even lampshades this trait of his.
Malaproper: Mary, to humorous effect - though only when she's a child.
Mood Whiplash: It bounces back and forth between sad, upbeat, funny and disturbing throughout the entire movie.
Mood Dissonance: "Que sera, sera".
Narrator
National Geographic Nudity: Max likes to read National Geographic, but the nude pictorials in it don't faze him in the slightly, since he's asexual.
Nerd: Max and, arguably, Mary too.
Nerd Glasses: Mary has them.
No Kill Like Overkill: Mary tries to commit suicide by swallowing pills and hanging herself at the same time.
No Social Skills: Both of them, but Max especially.
Oblivious to Love: Max.
Odd Friendship: The plot of the whole movie.
One-Woman Wail: When Vera finds Max's first letter.
Parental Abandonment: Max's folks.
Punny Name: Many of the minor characters, eg. Max's dentist.
Rage Breaking Point: Max explodes when he sees a homeless person littering after picking up cigarette butts throughout the film (his personal Berserk Button).
Ready for Lovemaking: Mary does this at after marrying Damien. His ambivalent reaction is the first clue that he's not exactly straight.
Real Is Brown
Refuge in Vulgarity
Replacement Goldfish: Literally. Several, in fact. Moments after we are introduced to Henry the Eighth, we are informed that there have been seven Henrys before him. We see the demise of future Henrys throughout the film.
Rhythm Typewriter: Max on his typewriter.
Ripped From The Phone Book: How Mary got Max's address; she just picked a random name from the listings at the post office.
Screwed by the Network: In the US, IFC chose to release it straight-to-DVD instead of giving it a theatrical release like other countries. As a result, the film was ineligible for Oscar nominations (a Best Animated Feature nomination was expected had it gone to theatres).
Shout Out:
- One to A Charlie Brown Christmas (the doctor is "in").
- Another to Oliver Sacks; Mary is seen reading his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
- Another to Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
- At one point, Max wears a shirt saying "aspies for freedom", which is the name of a real Asperger's rights organisation.
Someone to Remember Him By
Soundtrack Dissonance: Que Sera Sera. You will never hear the song in the same way.
Spinning Paper
Strongly Worded Letter: Writing them is a pastime of Max's.
Tearjerker: So, so many.
Timeshifted Actor: Bethany Whitmore plays Mary as a child. Toni Collette plays her as an adult.
Too Dumb to Live: Lots of unwise decisions get made, but none worse than that of the mime. If he had time to dig out an umbrella and open it tremblingly, he could've used that time to get out of the way.
Trademark Favorite Food: Chocolate, for both of them.
The Unsmile: Max's attempt to display "happiness".
Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Apart from the director's twenty year friendship with the source for the Max character (who was still alive at the time of the film's release and might still be today), mostly fiction.
What Do You Mean, It's Not Awesome?: The definitive using-a-typewriter scene, people.
Write Who You Know: As in all of Adam Elliot's films, the characters are mostly based on real people. Max, for example, is based on Elliot's pen-friend.
Yiddish as a Second Language
You Have To Have Jews