Mary and Max

[School of Movies 2020]

This one is so obscure that it didn't quite make $2m at the box office, so we are going to assume the vast majority of you haven't seen it and will shape our show around that. It's also heavy and alarming at times, despite its cosy art style as a stop-motion Australian animation with a quirky, twisted sense of humour.

It tells the tale of a young girl named Mary who fights the depressing doldrums of 70s suburbia by becoming random pen-pals with a nervous man in New York named Max. After an initial panic attack, Max (played with chameleonic natural intensity by the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman) gets into the swing of elaborating to this curious child many of his habits and reflexive responses, which are later diagnosed as Aspergers.   

And what the film becomes is a sharing of mental and societal hangups, helping us as an audience understand what living with these heightened sensitivities might be like. And our sponsor for this one asked us to bring in the two shrinks to help us along the way.

This episode was commissioned by Chris Kelly

Guests:

Dr Hunter Mulcare @realhuntermmm  

Amy Donaldson of @TwoShrinksPod