What kind of shell devised by other people do you think is the worst? The ones we design for ourselves. This aspect which we are all scarred with in one form or the other, like shame, loss, depression, or trauma, we can find it deep in Adam Elliot’s heart-wrenching stop motion animation ‘A Memoir of a Snail’. It’s fair to say that this is unlike any piece of animation you will see this year It’s a wonderful film, overall, but it is also one that requires emotional integrity to engage with, as it moves from comedy to tragedy in what it tries to teach us that life is decidedly to be lived in one direction: forward.
Grace’s life is both moving and disheartening. Voiced by Succession’s Sarah Snook, Grace explains how her mother died at childbirth leaving her father, who was a paraplegic, to take care of Grace and her twin brother Gilbert, voiced by Kodi Smit-Mcphee. However, due to unfortunate circumstances, the father passed away before being able to raise them. The twins were separated, Grace went to live with an adult sexually heteroflexible couple while Gilbert was taken to America by a set of religious fanatics. After narrating her life, Grace introduces us to her favorite pet snail Sylvia, and her friend Pinky, portrayed by Jacki Weaver. Grace and Gilbert then promise to reunite in every letter they write each other in the early times to commemorate one of their most moving memories together. A big chunk of Memoir of Snail encapsulates the letters exchanged between them.
Memoir of a Snail is not a movie to be dismissed just because it’s a stop-motion movie, rather it is one of the most beautifully complex movies of the year. Ellen has sculpted a world that merges perfectly with the work of Caro and Jeunet which may be an overstatement since the film does feature Pinon. The movie does contain some scenes that are taken straight out of a dream, but the emotions expressed are very much rooted in reality. It goes without saying that talking snails do not possess wisdom. The story in this movie is rather cliche and overused, yet the narration makes it worth watching. The Ost of this movie is very well composed by Elena and by calling it an actor is an understatement, it is if anything part of filmmaking. The unique experience that this movie provides is a blessing in itself.
That curse comprises numerous concepts, emotions, and allusions. It is not a common occurrence to come across a recipe book based on a stop-motion animation film by Sylvia Plath combined with Lord of the Flies and Cahiers du Cinema. Nevertheless, the maker of Mary and Max, which is equally astonishing, turns out to possess outstanding writing skills a talent that is seldom appreciated in the animation world which is generally very graphical. This is extremely influential because where the fans are a concern-Elliot is able to get a fantasy twist of things and play with the sensuousness of the travails of life in the most unpredictable way. Like the snails, we are like that and cannot go backward. Anyhow, that is basically the whole idea of contentment when life is giving us a tough time and nothing seems to work out but then we encounter a very small and random thing like an act of kindness from a stranger or even a book or a movie that inspires us to revolutionize.
For me, “Memoir of a Snail” is one of those not-so-difficult films that I can recall every scene and every line but for there any sense of overdoing. Some may be contrary and may have liked it had the stomach-churning few people stood a better chance of breathing. Because fables such as those do not work in this way. It is only in this layer of shame that Grace appears as a girl who recalls sexual repression and her child bullies and then meets Gilbert and his horrible family and then the least tolerable of all Pinky who always comes and shoves everybody and everything aside. For the picture “Memoir of a Snail” it is Pinky, of all people, who is a woman who is the same flesh of Yekaterinoslav’s humanitarianism, hope, and an appeal almost in all parts of the film not to miss a single moment of our life on this earth.
Elliot’s manuscript is so full of ideas that people can take or adopt different sides from it into their own way of living, but it’s actually a character remark about Grace’s future husband that I will keep in mind for quite a while. He has a habit of repairing broken pottery, but not in a way that attempts to disguise the fact that it has been broken. “All things can be mended and all things can be mended can be damaged”. There comes a time in life when the coverings we have used during our lives but are no longer necessary are stripped, and it’s a little hard for us to do that. The damaged parts are there for us to see, and for us to enjoy as well.
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