For a handful of reasons, I have slowly begun to consider 2009 to be the best year for animated cinema from the short 21st century. As subjective as art is, I have yet to find a year that has produced so diverse and incredible of a line-up. Leading the pack are two of my all-time favorites with Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) and Coraline (2009). There’s also Up (2009), which is one of the best of the best from Pixar’s incredible run. Add in the last hand-drawn animated Disney princess movie The Princess and the Frog (2009), and I’d argue this year’s already averaging a near four star rating. Given that I haven’t seen the films Ponyo (2009), The Secret of Kells (2009), and A Town Called Panic (2009), there’s room to suggest that the score can potentially move closer to near-perfect.
Then there’s Mary and Max (2009).
In the waning days of MySpace, when I still had vague ties to high school, I would read about friends I made in the literary arts department talking about how incredible this movie was. While it never reached Oscar Sunday, there was this reputation that existed in the back of my head, making me believe that I was missing out on a masterpiece. There wasn’t enough to make me go out and see it, but it continued to linger. Like all cult classics, it wasn’t exactly at the front of the conversation, but all of the cool kids with their own eclectic personalities would throw in a random reference to it and remind you that cool cinema is still out there. It exists outside the mainstream. These people may be a bit lonely or sensitive, and I loved them dearly.
Then at the start of July, The Criterion Channel launched a special called Arthouse Animation, serving as a decades-long bastion of film that existed in this camp. While some qualify as downright weird, there were others that expressed anguish through animation, such as the documentary Waltz With Bashir (2008) that mixed war stories with vivid animation. At other points, you get hallucinatory masterpieces like Paprika (2006) that only continue to prove why Satoshi Kohn was one of the greatest animation directors. There’s tons of stuff on there that I regrettably haven’t gotten around to yet, but when I saw Mary and Max, I knew that I had to finally scratch that off of my list.
By this time, my relationship with the film had changed just slightly. In 2019, I began self-identifying as autistic. Because of that, my relationship with media changed slightly as I observed how ASD-centered characters were represented. I followed these types of creators on YouTube and TikTok, doing everything to entrench myself in the community. While I still admit that I have plenty to learn, my sensitivity has allowed me to notice and appreciate good intentions while greatly wishing that I found something that felt a tad more authentic. I want to feel a film instinctively and know there was some genuine effort, that the art was inherently neurodivergent and not just an outside gaze.
Plain and simple, I cannot believe that Mary and Max exists. There are points that are so painfully familiar that it scares me. How does a film that paints autism as so dark and esoteric feel so genuine and human? There’s an effort put into every frame. You understand these characters on a visual level, where even the macabre stop motion style says something implicit about the protagonists’ feeling of other. The story is chock full of these recurring motifs that highlight how these characters are alone mentally based on baffling interests, things that don’t make sense to the outsider except to know that these special foods and routines provide comfort.
To briefly summarize the plot, it’s a lifelong relationship between Mary and Max. Mary is a young girl from a neglectful family looking for any form of connection. On the flip side, Max is an aging Jewish man with his own host of problems. He lives in New York, dealing with weight and mental issues as he tries to find a balance in his life. Oh sure, there’s a nebbish quality to him that exists in the letter he types away on a typewriter. He’ll demand royalties from those wanting the recipe for his chocolate hot dog sandwich. In any other film, he would be this gross side character not given any dimension. In director Adam Elliott’s vision, he is the sympathetic lead.
An important thing to know is the reason this film feels revolutionary is because of how unromantic it makes autism. I think back on The Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, a sexy version of neurodivergence. It’s what general audiences are more likely to flock to because there’s nothing difficult about it. The character is usually upbeat and simple-minded in ways that inspire change in others. Even those that aren’t written as overtly MPDG tend to lack a problematic subtext because, quite honestly, most might see that as bullying a disabled person –which I agree you shouldn’t do.
But Mary and Max isn’t bullying. It may not seem that way when exploring Max as a character, but that’s because of how rarely we’re allowed to see a three-dimensional autistic person. There are aspects of Max’s life that are downright depressing or uncomfortable. He has weight issues and his home life is full of small routines that might seem deranged. He is candidly aware that he is lonely, unattractive, and chances of living the fulfilled Hollywood life are almost nonexistent. There is no fantasy here, just this quest to live WITH autism. He doesn’t reject it as a part of himself and is in some ways proud of it. Still, there’s a part of him that feels empty, isolated from the people who populate his immediate life.
Mary is never directly mentioned as neurodivergent, but I believe that she fits enough of the traits to qualify. At worst, her neglect from a mother that wasn’t above stealing from a grocery store informs the more antisocial parts of her, a willingness to embrace singularity and enjoy things like nature. Her tangential association is another charming tool, naively believing that her disabled agoraphobic neighbor is suffering from “home-ophobia.” In these small ways, Elliott reflects how an autistic person sees the world without trivializing it, making them seem too dumb or in need of pleasing a neurotypical lead.
Together, Elliott does something even more impressive. Whereas most media would be fine highlighting ONE autistic character, Mary and Max focuses on two. This is important because it helps to explore the spectrum and that not one person is a perfect embodiment of traits. Not every story is as sad as Max’s or as eccentric as Mary’s. There’s room for a lot of personal understanding of how people live their lives. They may be weird and confusing to the outside world, but I believe by the end there’s something normalized about their journeys. There is an understanding of why they are the way they are, and suddenly they feel downright sympathetic.
Most importantly, this is one of the greatest examples of the double empathy problem. Basically, it’s the idea that autistics relate to neurotypical people differently due to aspects like masking and feeling pressured to conform. Meanwhile, they are more likely to connect with neurodivergent people with such ease.
That is why the relationship between a middle-aged man and a young girl isn’t bizarre in this context. For starters, it is just a correspondence where Max bestows his “wisdom” to Mary. Whereas her deviant ideas are seen as cute and childlike, his are often morbid and odd. Even then, it’s clear how much they understand each other implicitly. They will never meet, but it feels like they are connected. Much like them, I find myself most expressive when typing every word out allowing my words to be seen and edited. Speaking is difficult comparatively, and I imagine that Max especially struggles to be vulnerable with anyone he personally knows. This helps to play into his loneliness without him overtly saying it, making the study of the autistic mind much more vivid and clear.
Because something that is overlooked in media is the reality that mental disorders often come with struggles. This isn’t always something obvious like motor or speech functions. Sometimes it’s just that a person is perceived so much as “different” that they have trouble connecting to others. They are more likely to be depressed and suicidal. Mary and Max allows itself to acknowledge it in a way that is instinctive to character. Even if I don’t know Max personally, I recognize aspects of him and it makes the experience uncomfortable. The sense of despair isn’t something anything wants.
And yet the story ends with the one reality that cannot be overlooked. Yes, autism is full of complicated struggles that should make one cynical. While I’m not rejecting those who suffer more directly with sadness, I think there’s something to what the film is ultimately saying. Max is miserable, but he’s also capable of happiness. For one, he is friends with Mary and able to recognize that he is not alone because someone out there “thinks” like him. Also, even when he spends hours in his New York apartment he finds these small comforts in things he collects and consumes. It may not make sense, but it gives him solace.
Mary and Max is more than a victimhood story. It doesn’t treat autism as this glorified way of thinking, nor does it trivialize its downside in ways that would only benefit those (who are wrong) wishing to find a cure. I admit that it’s more adult and mature with many themes likely going over neurotypical people’s heads. Still, for those who feel like Mary or Max, there’s a good chance that something will resonate and remind you that it’s okay to be different, that there are reasons to hold onto optimism and continue seeing the world in more abstract terms.
In all honesty, 2009 continues to be one of the greatest years of the 21st century for animated film. I cannot believe that there ever was a year where stories of anthropomorphic foxes, button-eyed parents, jazz-singing frogs, and flying houses could all produce stories that emphasize why the medium remains essential and is more than kiddie fare. More importantly, I cannot believe that there’s a genuine masterpiece that in some ways is less extraordinary than any of these regarding neurodivergence. I am sure that if I saw it in 2009 that it wouldn’t hit the same as it does now, realizing that this is about as honest and real as I’ve ever seen things. It moves me to see something that actually feels lived in and is not meticulously crafted from three years of research. This is powerful stuff, worthy of being considered a hallmark in the autistic film canon.
The only thing that I don’t like? It’s been 12 years since Mary and Max and I have yet to find another film that feels as honest and challenging around the subject since. In a better world, there’d be a half-dozen more on this list that are far more than coded stories. Wouldn’t that be nice?
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