Memoir of a Snail Review

Memoir of a Snail is an Oscar-nominated animated film from Australia. It is Adam Elliot’s first feature film since the critically hit Mary and Max.

Grace Pudel (Sarah Snook) recites her life story to her pet snail. It is a story of tragedy and despair as she tells of her experiences with loneliness, separation, and death.

There’s a perception that animated films are only meant for children. A film Memoir of a Snail aims to disprove that belief due to the subject matter and sexual content. It’s only the second R-rated film to get an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Film.

Memoir of a Snail was a dark and sombre film that showed life being an endurance test of misery and pain. Grace had nothing but suffering in her life. It was a film that deliberately looked ugly as it showed the harshness of life. The characters were made to be fat, balding, and generally repugnant, and the colours were brown and grey. Whilst it was ugly there was no faulting the technical work. Visually and tonally Memoir of a Snail was close to the short film Butterfly which was used as the basis for the music video for “Bedshaped”. If Wallace and Gromit showed that stop-motion animation could be light-hearted and charming, then Memoir of a Snail showed the opposite.

Memoir of a Snail was a film that looked at many subjects. These included self-esteem and mental health, isolation, poverty, child abuse, and disability. Grace’s life started at a low point: her mum died in childbirth, she had health issues as a child including having a cleft lip, had to care for her paraplegic father, and got separated from her twin brother. The film aimed to have a message about hope and be life-affirming because Grace kept her resilience. Grace was an optimist who had a glass-half-full outlook. However, Grace was someone who was receiving a constant kicking. It was hard to watch because of the constant despair.

There was humour in the film: it was a mix of dark, macabre, and Australian. A joke involving Pinky’s (Jacki Weaver) husbands had all three types of humour in one. She even uttered my favourite swear word. There were moments which resulted in some chuckles but even in this area it was tinted with darkness since the subject matter offered revolved around death or sex.

Memoir of a Snail reminds the audience that life is hard and it can be tougher for some people. It’s a film that looks at the harsh side of life and even though it tries to put a positive spin on things it is hard to watch.