Inching Through Life

Film: Memoir of a Snail
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

One of the issues with Best Animated Feature specifically at the Oscars is that the winner is pretty much always going to be a movie for children. There are movies that are nominated that are clearly for adults, and this is a trend I like, even if I don’t always like the movie in question. It’s how we got nominations of films like I Lost My Body, Anomalisa, and Persepolis (and it doesn’t explain why Waltz with Bashir was robbed). Memoir of a Snail was never going to win this award, but I love that it got nominated, and it certainly partially makes up for the fact that Adam Elliot was denied a nomination for Mary & Max.

Make no mistake—while the Claymation looks like it would appeal to kids, Memoir of a Snail is clearly made for an adult audience. This is not merely for a couple of minor moments of animated nudity, but because of the adult themes—religious abuse, sexual kinks, suicide, and more. This is not a movie to sit the kiddies in front of while you go about your day. The bland color palette might be the first indication of this, but then again, Corpse Bride and Frankenweenie exist.

The story will come from the point of view of Grace Pudel (Charlotte Belsey as a child, then Sarah Snook for the bulk of the film), a lonely woman who has an obsession with snails. The film starts with Grace watching her friend Pinky (Jacki Weaver) die just after shouting the word “potatoes!” We learn that Grace and her brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) were born prematurely and that their birth killed their mother. They grew up with their father (Dominique Pinon), a former street performer who was hit by a car and left in a wheelchair. The Pudels have a difficult life, and when their father dies, Grace and Gilbert are separated.

Grace ends up in Canberra, raised by Ian and Narelle (both voiced by Paul Capsis), a pleasant couple whose favorite color is beige and whose main pastime is key parties, nudism, and swinging, meaning that Grace is often left on her own. Gilbert’s fate is far worse, winding up on the other side of the continent in Perth, the ward of a hyper religious family who runs an orchard and is regularly abusive. Gilbert writes Grace letters about leaving the orchard and coming to see her. Grace sort of realizes that she could save up her money and go see her brother, but instead buys everything snail-related she can find.

Eventually, Grace meets Pinky and the two become friends. And for a time, Grace’s life is looking up. Ken (Tony Armstrong) comes into her life, but just as they are planning on marrying, Grace gets some terrible news, and her life spirals into despair once again.

And this is the theme of the film. Grace’s life is one of quiet desperation, quiet because no one seems to really know her and while she wants a life, she instead sees herself as one of her snails, tucked safely into her shell to avoid being hurt. The bulk of the film is narrated in the past tense, with Grace talking to Sylvia, her favorite snail, that she has just released into the garden after the death of Pinky.

I’ve said before that I don’t tend to cry at movies that are particularly sad or upsetting. I tend to tear up when a movie hits an emotionally perfect moment, something that hits (as the kids say) all the feels. Memoir of a Snail hits that over and over at the end. I was fully choked up for the final 10 minutes or so of this. It’s beautiful, and the end of this movie could not be improved.

We need more animation created for an adult audience. This is not a movie that paints the world as rosy or gives us a “big bad” for our hero to fight against. Life is the “big bad” here, and Grace is fighting a losing battle against the world, in a sense. A happy ending here isn’t some terrible evil defeated or a war completed, but simple life lived quietly.

It seems to me unlikely that a film like Memoir of a Snail will ever really be in contention for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. You can get away with more adult themes in animated shorts, I think. You can get winners like If Anything Happens I Love You or In the Shadow of the Cypress, which would never fly for the Feature category. The actual winner for this year, Flow, is probably the closest we'll get to something that isn't specifically for children. This will likely always be the category that heavily favors movies designed for kids. The bleak graphics, the odd title, the general unattractiveness of the characters (something films like The Triplets of Belleville and My Life as a Zucchini share with this) makes it unlikely to ever do better than just a nomination.

But I love that these movies get nominated, and they should, just like the movies of Tomm Moore should continue to get nominations, even though his gorgeous work will never measure up to the glitz of Pixar, Disney, or DreamWorks. If you haven’t seen this, you need to.

Why to watch Memoir of a Snail: It really is a lovely story.
Why not to watch: Some people will give you grief for watching animation as an adult.