Mary And Max
Claymation film by Adam Elliott (Memoir Of A Snail) about the special pen friendship between a timid forty-something man from New York (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and eight-year-old Mary (Toni Colette) from Australia.
In the mid-1970s, a homely, friendless eight-year-old Australian girl picks a name out of a Manhattan phone book and writes to him; she includes a chocolate bar. She’s Mary Dinkle, the only child of an alcoholic mother and a distracted father. He’s Max Horowitz, an overweight man with Asperger’s, living alone in New York. He writes back, with chocolate. Thus begins a twenty-year correspondence, interrupted by a stay in an asylum and a few misunderstandings. They both feel unloved but find comfort in each other.
Mary falls in love with a neighbour, saves money to have a birthmark removed and deals with loss. Max has a friendship with a neighbour, tries to control his weight, and finally gets the dream job. Will the two ever meet face to face?