One of the best films of last year arrives on Stan today. Liam Maguren dives deep into the morbid magic of Memoir of a Snail.
Adam Elliot is to Australia what Aardman is to England. A national treasure? Of course. An Academy Award winner? Also true (for 2003 short Harvie Krumpet). But most importantly, an animation auteur whose style has become instantly recognisable worldwide.
But while Aardman sculpts symmetrical and neatly rotund characters, Elliot indulges in wonkiness and imperfections with his puppets. He was born with a tremor, so could never draw straight lines, choosing to embrace this wobbliness as an aesthetic.
These designs sharply reflect the stories he chooses to tell. Coining the term clayographies, stop-motion biopics loosely based on friends and family members, Elliot’s love for the broken characters he puts on screen comes from a genuine place—even when he’s pushing them through an emotional woodchipper.
“Without the dark, the light has no meaning,” Elliot told us last year. “I certainly drag my protagonists through the mud and I’m quite cruel to them.”
His latest feature, the Academy Award-nominated Memoir of a Snail, tells the life story of Grace Pudel (voiced by Sarah Snook), a melancholic hoarder who longs to be reunited with her twin brother Gilbert (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee). In one of the film’s many flashbacks, we see the two freshly orphaned siblings say goodbye for what feels like the last time.
Such a scene should pull at the heartstrings, and it does, but as the gloomy Gilbert looks towards his sister from the departing bus window, the vehicle’s license plate comes into view: YRU-SAD.
It’s one of the many gags in Memoir of a Snail that speaks to the filmmaker’s rough-as-guts sense of humour, leaning heavily into the “I’m quite cruel” part to the quote above. But these constant smattering of laughs are also dished out with care, making a dark and depressing story feel light and joyful.
This is especially true of Pinky, Grace’s chain-smoking, globe-trotting, elderly sex machine of a mother figure. Vocally enhanced by a perfectly cast Jacki Weaver, Pinky feels like a personification of the movie itself—a grungy figure that’s full of life and completely loveable. Her life story is a real highlight of the film, which includes retellings of grisly demises topped off with a nonchalant “Bugger” timed to comedic perfection.
Pinky’s whirlwind of a life contrasts sharply with Grace’s. She’d much rather look after her snails, collect snail merch, wear a snail hat, and marinate in that thick metaphor for 10-20 years. Not that there’s anything wrong with being an introvert, or collecting stuff as a hobby, but any habit can turn unhealthy, which is exactly what happens.
Props to the props department for making hoarding, an often-horrific act to bear witness to, look absolutely incredible in this film. There are so many items on screen at once, each one teeming with personality and a potential story to tell. It’s easy to forget just how much work goes into these kinds of shots, especially for a stop-motion film where everything’s done in-camera (i.e. every single thing exists, there are no CGI shortcuts).
Elliot has joked, “Why didn’t I write a film about a minimalist, not a hoarder?” Take that question seriously, however, and I believe you’ll tap into a deeper reason why it’s so easy to get wrapped up in the morbid magic of Memoir of a Snail.
It’s all in the art of stop-motion. The arduous art of stop-motion. Most people know an intensive amount of labour goes into the animated art form, but few fully understand just how intensive it gets. I’m a nerd for this stuff, and even I felt shook watching this 14-minute video of a person from Aardman animating one frame of footage in real time.
Why would people bother putting themselves through this painful, prolonged, practical process when there are easier, faster, technology-driven alternatives? It’s the same reason people still make home-cooked roast when you can quickly grab a KFC bucket: something made through a heavily considered process will always stand apart from a heavily processed product.
In the case of Memoir of a Snail, knowing that everything you see actually exists boosts your admiration—and thereby enjoyment—of the film. But even if you’re not aware of every little thing being real, something inside you feels it.
The tiny jitters unique to stop-motion movement, the intentionally broken look of the characters and backgrounds, the animators’ fingerprints purposefully left behind on the puppets… the film’s engulfed with these little imperfections. We recognise this, not just as being real, but as being handmade. And being human.
By embracing the imperfections of both his characters and the stop-motion process, Elliot flawlessly melds his storytelling tools with the story being told. Furthermore, the patience required to make a stop-motion feature means that every frame is considered, imbued with a care and affection that automated animation processes cannot replicate. It’s painful, but the pain is worth it, as the characters in Elliot’s films can attest.
Many don’t know how CGI models are created or animated. Even fewer of us know how AI’s lightning-fast video generation tools work to create its abhorrent night terror worlds of unreality. But there’s a craftiness inherent to every person of every skill level that will always give stop-motion animation a unique kind of relatability and humanity. As Elliot put it in this interview: “I think we all love making things with our hands, even if they’re not very good.”
