Mary & Max

Is this our first claymation film?! The director Adam Elliot won an Oscar for his 2003 short Harvey Krumpet (which we will show first tonight) and returns here with a simple comedy of a eight-year old girl (voice by Toni Collette) from Melbourne who randomly writes a letter to a middle-aged Jewish New Yorker with Asperger’s Syndrome (who’s voice gives us a second chance to listen to Phillip Seymour Hoffman). Rather than throw the letter away, he replies, starting a 20 year correspondence between the two unloved, lonely pen pals, where they discuss everything under the sun from pets to taxidermy, obesity to agoraphobia. Does this work in clay? Reviewers and audiences seem to love it, what will Keswick Film Club make of it?