"Mary and Max is no kids film, the characters are complex, confused, and sometimes a depressing bunch of misfits, but therein lies the beauty of the film."

Mary & Max is a wonderfully unique piece of art. As the credits rolled I had one of those rare emotional impulses to burst into a round of applause - willing the others around me of this wonderful piece of cinematic history to do the same. It was the only thing left to do as I had already burst into tears some time ago. Mary & Max has taken claymation to new levels, beyond humour, beyond quirky characters, even beyond the incredible technical skill it takes to make 808 miniature clay earl grey tea bag boxes to a place where you actually feel a new sense of compassion for people. I felt touched by a film that isn't afraid to shock, is by no means fluffy and light hearted but fills you with sadness, wonder, amusement and ultimately warmth and hope in your fellow man, making you want to make friends with the next stranger you see at your bus stop on the way home.

Mary and Max is the latest animated film from acclaimed Oscar winner Adam Elliot, he won an Oscar a few years ago for the 22 minute Harvie Krumpet. Elliot rose to animation fame in 1998 with an inspiring and original trilogy of short comedies, the first being Uncle which he made whilst still studying at Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, then followed Brother and then Cousin. Mary and Max is everything that its predecessors were and more. It is the heartwarming yet sometimes bitter sweet story of a very unlikely pen pal relationship between two incredibly different people. Based on Elliot's own real life relationship with his New York pen friend whom he has been writing to for twenty years and also has Asperger's Syndrome, this film is his testimony to that friendship.

When lonely, chubby 8 year old Mary Dinkle (her voice lent from the wonderfully talented Toni Collette) rips an address at random from the phone book whilst accompanying her tipsy Mother on another envelope shop lifting expedition to the post office, she embarks on a journey that will last twenty years and span two continents. When Mary writes her first letter from her sparse bedroom, hiding under the covers of her bed in her home in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, it is in the true spirit and innocence of an 8 year old. She retells in diary like fashion of how she's bullied at school, has a large birthmark on her head (the colour of poo) and that she has just been told that in Australia babies come from beer glasses and she would like to know where babies come from in America.

The recipient of Mary's letter is 44 year old Max Jerry Horowitz, (voiced by Philip Seymour Hoffman) who lives his simple life from his small New York apartment, he has Aspergers Syndrome and an addiction to chocolate hot dogs, the lottery and the National Geographic magazine. The relationship works because Max sees the world very much through the eyes of a child and as the years go by the two come to depend on each for a reflection of the world, its complexities and its confusions, from how to deal with bullies, to different and bizarre chocolate recipes, all through the naive and matter of fact eyes of children.

The attention to the detail of the characters personalities is as good as the attention to detail in the claymation itself. The film took almost five years to make, and it shows. What I loved was how well thought out the quirks and charms of each character was, from Mary's birth mark being the colour of poo, to the paranoia of Mister Biscuit, who watches Max when he eats. These finetuned details and the hilarious animated scenes that portray them to us are what keeps the film so watchable, lovable, and balances out the more serious and harder to swallow moments in this film.

Mary and Max has achieved what most animations haven't dared to even attempt, a bold, unusually disarming story, dealing with real issues, all be it with humour and the usual charm you would expect from an animation. However, Mary and Max is no kids film, the characters are complex, confused, and sometimes a depressing bunch of misfits, but therein lies the beauty of the film. Woven through the character and creativeness of Elliot's clay world, is the reality of life reflected through the screen that sometimes people are weird, ugly and relentlessly strange but in that they are beautifully different.