Mary and Max
“Mary and Max” may be the earthiest animated film I’ve seen this year, with its earthier characters and frame-by-frame shooting that are rare in today’s films that celebrate “technology” and “simulation.” However, this independent film without dazzling visual effects, heroic rendering and large-scale publicity has brought more emotional shock to people than any other 3D blockbuster. It may feel a little dull at first, but it doesn’t matter, please settle down your restless mood and watch it calmly. This film is slow enough to dry your heart. If Up is a fairy tale for adults, this movie is a scalpel for dissecting our spiritual world.
Marx concludes by saying: “I forgive you because you’re not perfect, you’re not perfect and neither is I, is anyone perfect, not even those who litter outside the door. When I was young, I wanted to be anyone but myself. Dr. Bernard Hashauf said if I were on an island, then I’d have to get used to being alone, just the coconut and me. My flaws and all of me, we can’t choose our flaws, they are part of us and we have to live with them, but we can choose our friends, and I’m glad I chose you. Everyone’s life is a long sidewalk. Some are neat and some, like me, are cracked with banana peels and cigarette butts. Your sidewalk is like mine, but not as cracked as mine. Someday, hopefully, our sidewalks will cross, and we’ll share a can of condensed milk. You’re my best friend. You’re my only friend.”
I’ve watched this dialogue so many times that I’ve almost memorized it.
The beginning of the film is like Amelia, which introduces the profiles of the two people. The colors are light and dark, and the story follows these two colors. Two people who did not have any interaction originally, one living in Melbourne and the other living in the United States, started to communicate with each other by chance. They are very similar, love chocolate, love noble animation, both live in lonely corners of the city, desperately lack of love, neither have many friends, rarely smile, in other people’s eyes, they are strange and hard to contact. Mary suffers from low self-esteem due to a birthmark on her forehead; Max suffers from mental illness and spends his days with imaginary friends and goldfish.
The encounter in the virtual world, which transcends the geographical limitations, enables them to find the people who know them best. They keep pouring out their views and understanding of society, love, friendship, sex and spiritual world through letters, constantly introducing their preferences and experiences to each other, telling everything they can’t say and comforting each other. A sincere friendship on such heating up, such as the other side of the letter has become the most worth looking forward to two people in life, letter after letter, in the tilted cold world of two people “embrace” together, become each other in the world the most loyal to rely on. Max had more experience, after all he was 44 years old, so when Mary mentioned some sensitive word, Max was crushed, and his mouth was stapled shut, “Have you ever been teased?” “Have you ever been in love? Have you ever had sex?” “Such sentences with innocent questions dug out the pain hidden in the depths of Marx’s memory like a knife, making Marx anxious and forced him to face himself again. It seemed that he saw his childhood in Mary and the throbbing of his stupid adolescence. And when Max’s heart was being put in a washing machine and twisted, did you touch the screen? Can you answer Mary’s question? Do you feel the same way? Take off your suit. Do you have some scars, too? Adults have what they think is a strong fortress, which maturity has broken, only innocence can bring it down. Young Mary has a secret love for her neighbor, longing for love and “making love”, but she is hurt by love again and again.
She said to Max, “I know love makes me miserable, so I don’t want to try, I think love is not ready for me”, her life is full of changes, she lost her parents, lost her lover, and finally almost lost Max as a friend. But in the end, Marx still forgave him, because Marx believed that he had chosen the right friend, and he had only one friend. At the moment when Mary was almost desperate for life, it was this old friend’s forgiveness that made her stand up again. In the past 20 years, the friendship between the two people had already been polished and unbreakable. This is even more than Mary has love and affection.
The final scene of the film is the most emotional scene of the whole film. After many years, Mary finally gathers up the courage to find Max, only to find that he has passed away peacefully on the sofa. Marx was wearing a pamphlet for reading expressions, so he seemed ready to meet his old friend. Marx covered the roof of the room with Mary’s letters over the years, neatly and undamaged, as if time had passed quietly before him, and the old typewriter was forever a symbol of their friendship, sitting in the sunlight at the window. Now Mary looked at all this with tears streaming down her face. I think in the process of two people sympathetic exchange of mind, they have already understood what love is, and the practice is greater than the average person, more unforgettable.
We spend our life exploring the value of friendship, some people say that friendship is the most lasting; some people say that friendship is fragile, love, friendship and family always appear in front of us as a choice, different people will give different answers. In fact, the most important thing in the process of getting along with yourself, there is a saying that “how you are, how your world is”, you must be completely open to yourself first, in order to exchange for others’ trust and recognition, this may be a little risky, but it is also the price that must be paid in this life. Just like in the movie, Mary doesn’t know who is on the other side of the letter, but she gives out her true self, so she gets equal treatment from the other side and gets true friendship.
Modern people have a strong sense of self-protection, in the process of choosing friends, many people are always in the pursuit of the so-called perfect, always set many so-called standards for their choice of friends, not easy to hand over the heart, and parents will often come out and say “who is not a good boy, don’t play with him”, these are sick ideas, Like a wall blocking the passage between heart and heart, “This kind of hedgehog, even if anyone has treated me well, will bring injury”. We make friends not for temporary pleasure, nor for profit, let alone to pursue the so-called “equality”, what we need is the most inner communication and communication, we need friends not to accompany you every day to eat, drink and play, but abandon you when you lose everything. It is someone who can slap you when you make a mistake, stop the knife when you are being cut, walk you down a long street when you are most confused, and understand exactly what you are thinking without speaking.
Friendship is actually looking for another oneself, because only one will not betray themselves.
