What's worse than the shells that other people place us in our lives? The shells that we place on ourselves. This idea of the intangible things that we carry on our backs, like insecurity, depression, grief, and trauma, is at the core of Adam Elliot's moving stop-motion saga "Memoir of a Snail," which is unlike any other animated film you will see this year. It's a gorgeous film, but it's also an emotionally intelligent movie, one that shifts and flows between comedy and tragedy, reminding us that life can only be lived forward.
Sarah Snook (of "Succession" fame) delicately voices Grace, who is telling her life story to her favorite pet snail, Sylvia, after the death of the last person on Earth she cared about, her best friend Pinky (a wonderful Jacki Weaver). It's a story of notable hardship. Mom died in childbirth. Dad was a paraplegic who didn't live long enough to raise Grace or her twin brother Gilbert (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee in adulthood). The twins were split after Dad passed, sending Grace to a pair of swingers—yes, this is a shockingly adult stop-motion movie, likely setting a new record for nudity in the form—and Gilbert to a family of religious fundamentalists on the other side of the country. Much of "Memoir of a Snail" consists of letters sent back and forth between Grace and Gilbert, vowing to return to each other as soon as they can escape the shells that life has placed on them.
Just because it's stop-motion doesn't mean "Memoir of a Snail" can't be one of the most thematically dense films of the year. Elliot has crafted a whimsical world, one that feels inspired by the work of Marc Caro & Jean-Pierre Jeunet in films like "Delicatessen" and "Amelie"—an inspiration that gains even more likelihood with the inclusion of JPJ regular Dominique Pinon in the voice cast. Some sequences have an exaggerated, fantasy aesthetic, but it's all grounded just enough in reality to allow its emotions to register. What I'm saying is don't expect talking snails. This is a story of an ordinary life in many ways, made extraordinary by how beautifully it's told. And while we're on the technical acumen of this film, a brief aside to note one of the best scores of the year, by far, from Elena Kats-Chernin, so lovely that it almost becomes a character in the film. It's essential to the spell this movie casts.
That spell is bursting to the seams with ideas, emotions, and references. It's not every day you see a stop-motion animated film with nods to Sylvia Plath, Lord of the Flies, and Cahiers du Cinema. Still, the creator of the equally marvelous "Mary & Max" is also a phenomenal writer, which is often underestimated in such a visually-minded medium as animation. This is a carefully calibrated character arc—just as the bleakness of Grace's story feels like it's going to overwhelm you, Elliot pivots to revel in the unpredictable grace of life, reminding us that snails can't move backward, and neither can we. That's the point. When we think life is too much, a warm gesture from a stranger or a memory of a loved one or even just a good book or film can shift our perspective.
"Memoir of a Snail" is one of those tender films in which every frame and every line feels so carefully considered, and yet it's somehow not over-written at the same time. Some may disagree and wish the film could allow someone to emotionally catch their breath, but that's not how a story like this works. By charting Grace's entire life to this point, Elliot can explore so many different ideas, from the childhood insecurity placed on Grace by bullies to Gilbert's horrifically judgmental family to the way Pinky pushes away all of the things that try to hold her down. Pinky's joie de vivre is essential to the success of "Memoir of a Snail," a reminder of Grace's inherent kindness and how we must live every moment on this earth to the fullest.
Elliot's script is so loaded with ideas that people can take different aspects of it into their own lives, but it's actually a line about Grace's eventual husband that I'll carry for a long time. His hobby is repairing broken pottery, but not in a way that hides that it was broken in the first place. "All things can be repaired, and our cracks celebrated." When we discard the shells that we've placed on ourselves in life, we don't do so easily. We can still see the cracks. But we can also choose to celebrate them.
This review was filed from Fantastic Fest. It opens on October 25th.
