In this movie we can see how strange people could become good friends. This is the story of Mary and Max, two people with different ages and personalities that know each other by chance and they make an interesting relationship when communicating just through traditional mail. Despite the fact that one of them lives in United States, and the other one lives in Australia, they found an interesting and real friendship. We can see that making friends it is possible even when some people either do not have good self-esteem or have a psychiatric illness.
The movie is a bizarre version of real people. I like animated movies, I never had seen this one, but Mary and Max is quite similar with regard to Chicken Run in terms of animation. It is a fact that the story is very different, while the topic in the first one is about friendship between two people, in the second one is about hens and roosters wanting to escape from their farm. However, both movies have great details with the characters in motion. It is a matter of fact that the most important thing is both, producer imagination and the ability that people in the computer animation have when thinking in how they are presenting the “world” inside the movie than the story itself.
The characters in the movie have different personalities and ways of living that contrasts each other when performing their lives. First of all, at the beginning of the movie it can be seen Max differs from Mary in terms of age. Max is an old man who suffers of an incurable psychiatric illness that makes he feels such as a fastidious person, and most things that happen surprisingly make he is be afraid of. On the contrary, Mary is eight years old, a girl who feels apart of his friends because her physical appearance – she thinks; and beyond age, she is a girl very interested in meet new things around her world. Both share the same feeling: having real friends, not only in their minds, but also in their real world.
Food is an interesting point of both characters. Whereas Max enjoys eating hot dog bread with chocolate whenever is at home, Mary enjoys eating sweetened condensed milk. Max has a friend, probably little blind, an old man that likes cooking, and sometimes share his preparations with him. At Mary’s house, her mom is who prepares food. Certainly, looks like she doesn’t do with care when cooking - perhaps because her addiction to smoking or drinking alcohol.
Places where Max and Mary live are contrasted when they appear. Max lives in New York, which is presented such as a noisy and dirty city. In fact, noisy motorcycle riders running on the street are seen; also people smoking and dropping cigarette butts in everywhere (it is funny see how Max is catching butts when he is in the bus stop). In this city there are big buildings and skyscrapers in everywhere. Max lives in a small flat inside one of them. The environment turns gray whenever he appears. On the other hand, Mary lives in some small town in Australia. Streets are with a few or without cars on. Houses are in spacious places with backyards and front spaces. Looks like it is a very quiet place, sometimes a boring place where nothing happens. In contrast of gray scenes of Max in New York, when Mary appears the environment turns brown.
As seen in the movie, friendship is one of the most important feelings in human beings. In spite of one person can be considerably older than another one, they can be friends, and even better, learn from each other. But not only that, but also their way of living is an important thing. I think they can be good pen pals, but thinking in living close or together may change their behavior. They will not have the chance to re-think or re-write something before send it by email when talking face to face. But this is another story, it would have been interesting to watch another ending of the movie like they would have met and lived together.
