Memoir of a Snail
First screened and reviewed in November 2024
Director: Adam Elliot. Voice Cast: Sarah Snook, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Jacki Weaver, Dominique Pinon, Eric Bana, Magda Szubanski, Tony Armstrong, Nick Cave, Luke Elliot. Screenplay: Adam Elliot. In Brief:
Ambitious, intricate technique in constant battle with wearying tone. Wispy thinking. Trite but sincere themes.
VOR:④
Happy to grant that Elliot remains in stalwart defense of a dying art form and pushes it to new extremes. Style handily outpaces substance.
I'd have loved to love this. I loved Mary and Max. But, even granting that it might not be the week to consume something so tenaciously downcast—the Painted Bird of claymation features—I just found its procession of miseries a bit too relentless, its moments of whimsy adrift and unconvincing as a result, its vocal performances thoroughly average (I was sure that Grace was Hannah Gadsby!), and its overall structure rather piecemeal, like a dozen short ideas melded into a tonally ambitious, technically impressive, but unpersuasive whole. And the snail metaphors... I would like to assure the filmmakers that I got them. Clearly this is going over big with lots of people, so don't take my word for it! But even in its best passages, I was coolly admiring this Memoir without being all that moved, engaged, or entertained.
