Elliot’s expertly crafted film is the story of us all: a beautifully rich, funny and always tender journey into what it means to be human. It is a story about the hurdles thrown into our path, hurdles that may stop us from moving forward and encourage us to go into reverse, from childhood trauma to anxiety, fear and grief. Memoir of a Snail won Best Film at this year’s BFI London Film Festival and will arrive in UK cinemas in 2025.
Did you know that the humble snail has been slowly moving around the Earth for approximately 500 million years? Or that snails can be found everywhere on our planet, even Antarctica! For a slow-moving gastropod mollusc that can’t hear a thing and often ends up the victim of predators, human shoes, poison and French dinner plates, that’s pretty impressive. Another thing people may not realise is that while snails may move slowly, they never reverse due to the wave motion of their foot. They are always looking forward, not back. As humans, we spend a lot of our time looking back, and in doing so, we often put ourselves in reverse rather than stepping on the gas to move forward.
Just like snails, we all carry a shell. Sure, ours is mental rather than physical, but it is a shell all the same, and just like the humble mollusc, that shell grows with us during our lives, offering us sanctuary and a safe place to think. But it can also become a prison if we retreat into it and can’t find our way back out. Adam Elliot’s beautiful, moving, and outstanding stop-motion tale, Memoir of a Snail, is about the shell we create and carry throughout our lives.
Elliot’s expertly crafted film is the story of us all: a beautifully rich, funny and always tender journey into what it means to be human. It is a story about the hurdles thrown into our path, hurdles that may stop us from moving forward and encourage us to go into reverse, from childhood trauma to anxiety, fear and grief. But it is also a story about the power of love, friendship, and family in helping us to overcome those hurdles and find a new path. Elliot’s Memoirs of a Snail may be set in a whimsical world of plasticine, clay and wire creations, but trust me, it’s one of the most human films you will see this year.
Grace (Sarah Snook) is so lonely and so lost that her life feels empty and void of hope. Her one friend, the elderly firecracker Pinky (Jacki Weaver), has just died, and she was all that kept Grace moving. Life has been hard for Grace, and over the years, she has become a reclusive hoarder of snail memorabilia. Sitting in Pinky’s garden near the vegetable patch her old friend loved, Grace talks to the only creature she feels connected to, her pet snail.
Once upon a time, Grace had a twin brother, Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who dreamed of becoming a fire-breathing street entertainer in Paris. Grace and Gilbert’s childhood wasn’t perfect; in fact, it was far from it, from the bullying Grace endured due to her cleft lip to the loss of their mum and a father who, despite his best efforts, was unable to care for them due to his paraplegia. But despite the hurdles, Grace and Gilbert loved and protected one another.
However, when their dad suddenly died, the state moved in and separated them, sending them to opposite ends of Australia. Gilbert ended up with religious nutters at an apple farm in the middle of nowhere, which was not a safe space for a rebellious boy just beginning to find his sexuality. And Grace, well, she ended up with two foster parents who were more interested in swinging parties and nudist beaches than the girl under their roof. Memoir of a Snail is the story of Grace’s life and the shell she has carried for so long, a shell that has become so heavy it threatens to crush her under its weight.
Eight years in the making, every frame of Elliot’s stop-motion wonder is truly unforgettable, and when you couple its visual beauty with a screenplay rich in detail, humour, and psychological observation, Memoir of a Snail earns its place as one of the best movies of the year and one of the finest adult animated films I have ever had the pleasure of watching. Memoir of a Snail is a film crafted with such precision and care that it’s impossible not to fall in love with its characters and its tender tale of one girl’s painful journey from childhood to middle age, and the emotional baggage she has collected along the way.
Memoir of a Snail is stop-motion art at its purest; there is no use of CGI or AI, just 24 images per second of lovingly crafted models, characters and sets. A testament to the enduring beauty of stop-motion animation in crafting new worlds and a love letter to the power of storytelling in helping us explore the complex emotions and feelings we often keep locked away, Memoir of a Snail is unlike anything else you will see this year. In 2004, Adam Elliot won the Oscar for Best Animated Short with Harvie Krumpet, a character who appears in all his subsequent films, including this one. If there is any justice, another Oscar is on the way for Memoir of a Snail.
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