Memoir of a Snail, MIFF review: triumph of the human thumb-print

Every single frame of Adam Elliot’s gorgeous, life-affirming Claymation feature Memoir of a Snail is handmade. Each shot bears the wonky, wonderful thumb-print of a human being. As Elliot told the audience before last night’s Opening Gala screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival, there’s not one bit of CGI in the whole 94 minutes. Every prop, sets and character is a tangible, miniature object, made by a team of Australian sculptors and artists (paid award rates) and brought to life in a painstaking 33-week stop motion shoot at Melbourne’s Dockland Studios.

But does all this matter? Is the film itself a pleasure to sit through? The short answer is, yes, absolutely. But all that ‘making of’ meta-detail matters too, because Memoir of a Snail (which recently won the Annecy Film Festival Cristal Award for Best Feature) is an important film for the Australian screen industry and a reminder of why it is that we continue to fund, support and protect it: for the human beings, of course. To have our own culture.

I must confess that Claymation is not my favourite kind of screen storytelling. While I’m an admirer of Elliot’s singular talent and tenacity as an artist, along with his distinctive ‘clayographies’ that include the watershed moment of the Academy Award-winning short film Harvie Krumpet (2003), I did find his previous feature-length film Mary and Max (2009), a little bit brown and grim and… well, depressing. The grotesque, tragicomic sensibility lent itself better, I thought, to the short form of Elliot’s award-winning, semi-autobiographical films like Uncle (1996), Cousin (1999) and Brother (2000).

ScreenHub: Aussie animation Memoir of a Snail wins at Annecy

But Memoir of a Snail is delightful. It’s quirky, funny and emotionally satisfying. Only occasionally does it make the audience suffer with excess pathos and a couple of repetitious beats. But that’s a minor quibble and I’m only including it to show that I haven’t entirely lost my critical faculties.

Memoir of a Snail is the life story of Grace Pudel (rhymes with ‘muddle’), born in Melbourne in the 1970s. Voiced by Sarah Snook, the adult Grace is an eccentric misfit obsessed with snails of every kind. She wears a knitted hat with eyes on stalks, and is herself a kind of snail, imprisoned in a shell of hoarding, loneliness and grief. We soon understand why as she flashes back to the beginning.

Grace narrates a life filled with loss and tragedy, starting with being born with a cleft palate, to a mother who dies in childbirth, which leaves her in the care of her French street-performer father (Dominique Pinon) who is subsequently run over by a truck and left paraplegic in a wheelchair. Yes, this is the kind of maximally dark-on-dark piling disaster plot that Elliot favours.

But there are happy memories for Grace too, of a cosy childhood living with her adored twin brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a budding pyromaniac who protects her from the bullies that tease her about her lip scar. Yes, they live in a Collingwood housing commission flat, and yes, their father is an alcoholic with sleep apnea. But there are jellybeans to eat and good books to read. (Elliot’s main characters are often urbane and literate, even when they’re penniless). For all his faults, this dad is loving and affectionate, taking the twins on outings to Luna Park and riding the rollercoaster with glee.

But then Dad dies and the twins are split up. Grace is sent to live in boring Canberra with nudist swingers, Ian and Narelle (both voiced by Paul Capsis), who read – horror of horrors – self-help books! Brother Gilbert is sent off to the wilds of West Australia, imprisoned by religious fundamentalist apple farmers who worship ‘the baby Jesus’ and abhor his homosexual experiments.

The loneliness and loss here are huge. Tears. There are a lot of them in Memoir of a Snail. Perhaps too many. (What a marvel to learn that they’re made from glycerine; that water is a mix of clear plastic and sexual lubricant; and raindrops are the bubbles from bubblewrap!) But thankfully, just when you think you can’t stand the darkness and more brimming eyes, in swerves Grace’s new friend, the ancient and irrepressible Pinky, warmly voiced by a lisping Jacki Weaver.

Pinky is the film’s shining co-star, an old lady with a larger-than-life history that includes playing ping-pong with Fidel Castro, and losing one of her husbands to a crocodile. The lines and crinkles on Pinky’s face are initially horrifying but as the film goes on she becomes more beautiful, in what is a great exercise in anti-ageism. Pinky brings colour and hilarity and she helps to crack open Grace’s shell. The other characters you need to know about are Ken (Tony Armstrong), a handsome microwave technician next door whose bouffant hairdo can’t hide a bald spot; and the drunken magistrate (Eric Bana). Other voices include Magda Szubanski and even a cameo by Nick Cave.

Memoir of a Snail: a Melbourne fairytale

There are many fairytale elements in Memoir of a Snail, but without giving too much away, the one I love most is the manner in which the city of Melbourne provides a happy ending and a homecoming. Seeing our humble grey city lovingly rendered in lumpy clay and lit up as a central character is nothing less than a revelation, with so many moments that will be heartwarming for any Melburnian:  ‘Oh, there’s the grinning face at Luna Park, and the brown Collingwood Towers, and oh, the Eiffel Tower in Paris is suddenly morphing back into our own little Arts Centre Spire.’ It’s magic.

Which brings us back to why Australian films matter, with their specific details and home-made peculiarities. ‘Telling our own stories and seeing ourselves on screen’ may be a worn-out old chestnut of a justification for our industry, but it’s a cliché for a reason, and an argument even more necessary in the age of AI, as we quiver and quake about the future of filmmaking and the point of the whole expensive process or having our own culture.

Memoir of a Snail is the work of an auteur as well as the work of hundreds of other artists, filmmakers, technicians and creative producers. I wish I could mention more talent by name but here are just a few: producer Liz Kearney, executive producer Robert Connelly, composer Elena Katz-Chernin (with a score performed by the Australian Chamber Orchestra), cinematographer Gerald Thompson, editor Bill Murphy ASE, animator John Lewis, and sound designer David Williams.

Is this a perfect film? Gloriously, no. Elliot is the first to admit it. Born with a physiological tremor, he has made that shake part of his signature style. Here’s what he writes in the press notes, and it’s worth a read for anyone trying to make original work:

‘Like most artists I strive for perfection but know this is a hopeless ambition. There is always a shot I’d like to redo, a line to rewrite; the day the film gets locked is bittersweet. Memoir of a Snail has taken eight years to form and now the film is complete I feel sad the journey is over. We’ve tried our hardest with the budget we had; made many sacrifices to ensure Grace’s story got told with dignity and respect. They may be just little blobs of clay, but to my team and I, they are real people. Through the magic of stopmotion we truly hope their little lives give meaning, joy, and comfort to those who watch.’

Do check out Memoir of a Snail either at MIFF, or when it comes out in cinemas in October, if you’d like to keep seeing films with distinctive thumb-prints.

Memoir of a Snail opened at the 72^nd Melbourne International Film Festival on 8 August. The film will be on general release in Australia through Madman from 17 October 2024.