The Memoir of a Snail, an Australian filmmaker Adam Elliot has made into a feature-length stop-motion animation. He is also famous for his so-called “‘Clayography’”—the blend of “real clay artistry” and compelling narratives. Elliot’s stories, like how he incorporates deep emotion into his films, remains unaltered in this one.
This film depicts Grace Pudel as a ‘shy and introverted woman’ with an obsessive love for snails. Her life is plagued by overwhelming challenges. The portrayal of Grace Pudel’s life expands from childhood to old age and is set to a span of many decades. The film offers a still picture of strong emotion as it depicts a life of a person grappling with hope, learning to live with profound silence, and healing from deep-rooted personal grief.
The World of Grace Pudel
The year is the 1970s and the place is Melbourne, Australia. Grace is born into a set of rather unfortunate circumstances when her mother dies shortly after giving birth to Grace and her twin brother, Gilbert. Grace and Gilbert are raised by their father. He is known as an ex-circus juggler, now crippled. Though the children are raised with love, the family comes from a background of social isolation. Grace and Gilbert share a strong bond, and their father, Percy helps to strengthen this bond.
From the very start, Grace is born with a facial difference, and with snail obsession. Early on, the focus on isolation impacts on her psychological perceptions, the shifting internal ache during deeply reflective moments, due to her birth, leads her focus on the creatures, instead of being with humans – her home. This means, Grace is born with the internal fascination for a lifetime.
When Grace discovered her beloved husband while on a boat in South France, and later on, faced with the internal disconnect due to within neglect, she lost them both. Post-dated emotional separation due to hopelessly formal neglect from the rest, means deeply held internal feelings due to neglect from the couple. With Gilbert, isolation of such magnitude means disconnection.
Life is a conduit of treasured sentiments and mundane practices. Emotional separation means losing the husband. Having lost the husband, she became a devoted collector of snail themed books, and creations, with the aim to emotionally dwell in the world. Thus, the world is a sanctuary of Grace.
Grace is not utterly devoid of companionship. She develops a close friendship with a rather quirky pensioner called Pinky, a rather vibrant individual who resides in the same complex. Pinky is brash, witty, and larger than life, and her friendship allows for Grace to blossom. During the course of their interactions, Grace starts to remember again what it is to love someone, and to let someone love her back.
In middle age, Grace also has a partner with whom she shares her life with, called Ken. Though he is quite caring to start with, the romance is short-lived, and Grace has to mend herself yet again. This period of her life is a profound one, as it is filled with introspection. It is the time when she starts thinking about what she has lost, what she knows now, and what is her perception of her position in the cosmos.
A Journey Toward Healing
Pinky develops an illness, and during this time, the deepening of the bond between the two women becomes apparent as Grace starts shifting into the caretaker role. For the story, Pinky’s death is important, given its emotional impact as well as the motivation it provides Grace. Grace is left with the message that she is supposed to actively live her life, as opposed to merely being an observer. This quiet transformation is marked, however, by the shift being simple yet powerful.
The film features, and this is one of its most powerful acts, the moment in which Grace decides to get rid of all her pet snails. The collection that she cherished and that used to bring her a great deal of comfort has now devolved into a mere physical manifestation of the emotional baggage she is holding onto. The collection is not a rejection of the past, but an enabling embrace of the future.
The Reunion
The final chapter of the film has Grace take a very bold step. Talking about herself, she transforms her life story into a short animated film using the stop motion technique, which she illustrates in narrative form. To her utter shock, one of the guests that shows up to the premiere screening is her brother Gilbert, whom she hasn’t seen in a while. Gilbert and Grace have not spoken in years, and now it would seem that they have finally connected again.
Their reunion is serene, gentle, and is filled with feeling that is hard to put into words. To commemorate time spent together as children, the reminisce and their father’s portion of ashes at their old rollercoaster gives meaning to their discret past coinciding with new possibilities of the future.
Animation Style and Tone
Sticky snail ropes, turned to sand, transform into etchings of hidden landscapes at the edge of sleeping cities. Every hand-shot frame, whole in the armor of this beautiful screen, lies in worlds of hand-built stages, spy holes and clay puppets. Its emotions anchored by the fabricage of soft ties, timid sables, and dusted brooms, the colors in the film still tend toward utmost neutral, still as the worn linen sheet of a sleeping child. The volume is stitched together with the soft vocalizations of children’s storytellers. The motion invokes a rest so deep that when it does break, the heart is already wide awake.
The title, as well as the film itself, tells of a snail’s pace chronology, one extremely slow. Still, it is so agreeable and put together, so well thought out one hardly notices that it is. Like a snail travelling to the heart of a lush garden, on each step their is admiration and deep thought. It contains intertwining threads of light-heartedness, but the predominant feel is one of depth.
Themes and Meaning
Each aspect of ‘Memoir of a Snail’ revolves around:
Loneliness and Connection: Grace’s remembrance is a lesson that even the most neglected of people can experience relationships of great value, and sometimes in the most surprising ways.
Memory and Letting Go: The film tenderly grapples with the notion that we carry elements of the past with us; however, it does not emphasize that we are irrevocably tethered to it.
Resilience in Small Moments: The film celebrates simplicity and the strength that is to be found in the ‘ordinary.’
Empathy and Acceptance: The film does not, and will not, attempt to criticize these people: it is simply concerned with how the story will unfold.
Conclusion
‘Memoir of a Snail’ is an elegantly woven tale regarding the unassuming battles and gentle victories of existence. It does not serve as a grand narrative filled with emphatic scenes and sensational plot developments. Rather, it is something much more exceptional, more permanent: a film that conveys emotional transparency, artistic morality, and a deep insight to the essence of being human.
Grace’s remote transformation through a lacking self-esteem to a self sustained individual goes past being a remarkable personal feat alone. It serves as a major reflection point to many indicating that, personal development does not always have to be an elaborate affair and the whol pathway does not have to be dazzling. It could be the mere nuances. It could, very well, be the sloth-like rapid of pace that makes all the difference.
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