Film “Memoirs of a snail” – a life behind the protective shield

As in “Mary & Max – Oder: Schrumpt sheep when it rains?”, Where a little girl and an autistic man become letter friends, they are also devoted to figures on the sidelines of society this time. How personally is “memoirs of a snail”?

In every film I make, there are always one or two family members on which I build a figure. Grace is based on my mother, who liked to collect things. A friend of mine has been born with a cleft of a palate and so there is a lot of her traumatic childhood in it. There are many decorations and things that are completely invented and imagined. “Mary & Max” is based on my pen lover in New York, who died last year. Even today, young people in particular write to me who identify with Max in “Mary & Max” – especially if they belong to the autistic spectrum. I hope it is similar with “memoirs of a snail”.

Grace is separated from her twin brother as a child. She collects snails in any form and later became friends with an older lady (Pinky). I really loved her. What secret is behind it?

Everything is related to the cinematic idea that we all have to let go to believe the actors. It is no different with animated films. The additional challenge for stop-motion technology is that the audience knows that it is essentially only a lump of plasticine. From the first second you have to convince them that they are real, have a soul and a heartbeat. It’s not easy. I spent two and a half years of writing and made many, many designs to make these figures as authentic as possible.

How do you succeed in that you like to follow the stop-motion figures?

You have to put yourself in the figure and resonate with it. For example, we all had bad luck in our life. Grace is very unlucky. We all know the feeling of not belonging and being lonely. The situation is similar with Pinky, who reminds us of our eccentric aunt or of people from our lives who have an excessive joie de vivre. A friend of mine once played with Fidel Castro table tennis. At first I didn’t believe it, but then. She is pinky for me. Pinky is cheeky, rebellious and does not take care of what others think about her. She is someone we want to be when we get older while Grace is a figure that we think we are.

Interview

IMAGO/APress International

Adam ElliotBorn in Melbourne in 1972, won an Oscar for his animated short film “Harvie Krumpet” in 2004. His first feature film “Mary & Max”, which was shot in Stop-Motion, celebrated its premiere in 2009 and also opened the festival. “Memoirs of a snail” was nominated for an Oscar in the “Best animated film” category in 2025.

I think it’s also a lot about meeting the right tone to touch people …

Sarah Snook has done a wonderful job. We spent a lot of time together in the recording studio to achieve this intimacy. I brought one of the Sylvia snails with me, put her next to Sarah and then asked Sarah to simply speak to Sylvia for the next few hours and dimmed the light. I wanted it to feel like she was in a bar at two in the morning and would tell her life story – or in this case a snail. We quickly forgot that it is an animated film.

What is important when someone speaks one of your characters?

We strive for realism as best we can. The problem with actors is that they tend to exaggerate their voices in an animated films. We didn’t want that! We wanted real, true voices and not false accents. That’s why I hired Dominique Pinon for the figure of Gilbert and Grace’s father. The father was once a street artist in Paris. Since Pignon is French -speaking, it fits perfectly.

Why “memoirs of a snail” and not memoirs from another animal?

I see snails as the introverters of the animal world. When you touch their antennas, pull yourself back into your housing. Grace does that all her life. She withdraws with pain and trauma and uses the hoarding as a kind of buffer and protective shield with further pain. I also like the elegant vertebra on a snail shell. The vertebrae is a beautiful symbol of life that rotates in a circle. I also found that snails can only move forward. That fits very well with the quote from Søren Kierkegaard: “Life can only be understood backwards, but only lived forward.” I get a lot of emails and news from young people who find this quote very profound. They believe that it comes from me.

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Stop motion is quite complex. What numbers do we talk about?

Hundreds of people worked on the film. 200 sets were built and about as many kneading figures, which took four months. The production of each figure lasted up to five or six weeks and cost around $ 10,000 to $ 15,000. We never counted, but there were an estimated between 5000 and 7000 props, including the entire snail horde. The film cost seven million Australian dollars; The kneading mass was the cheaper part.

The film is called “Memoirs of a snail”, the production company “Snails Pace Films”. How long did it take to realize the film?

Seven animators worked out about five to ten seconds a day. In total, it took 32 weeks to encourage the kneading figures. The music was composed from scratch. After the recording, it took six months to process the entire orchestra. Overall, we have completed the film in less than seven years. In comparison, »Avatar« films for implementation need forever. I am already working on my next feature film – an Australian road movie. I don’t want to tell stories about people who are stuck in their suburb of sleep.

“Memoirs of a snail”: Australia 2024, directed and script: Adam Elliot. 95 minutes, start: July 24th.