Australian animation auteur Adam Elliot blazes unique claymation trail with Memoir of a Snail

Australian animation auteur Adam Elliot has certainly carved his niche with his style of cinema and animation that’s as personal as it is unique. His brand of claymation is immediately identifiable through an animation and storytelling style that balances a hefty amount of the dark and the light, showing an honest portrayal of the outcasts of Australiana. X-Press Film Editor DAVID MORGAN-BROWN spoke with Adam Elliot about his new feature film, Memoir of a Snail, and the influences that come from himself and those in his life.

Where did you get the inspiration from, or ideas for, this story and its characters? 

All my films are based on actual people, and this one is based on bits of my mother. So Grace is really an amalgamation of my mother and a close friend of mine who was born with a severe cleft palate and, as a child, had a lot of operations on her mouth and was teased and bullied a lot at school, but then became this extrovert and very flamboyant adult. And I was fascinated by “how did someone transform themselves from being very shy to being very extroverted?” And when my father died, he had three sheds full of stuff, and I became fascinated by “why do people collect? When does collecting become hoarding?”

And so I started to read a lot of books on psychology and speak to psychologists about what is hoarding and what the definition of it is. And the more research I did, the more I discovered that extreme hoarders have suffered a huge degree of trauma, and more often than not, the loss of a child, a twin, or a sibling. So the hoarding is a coping mechanism, and for every item they collect, they give a sentimental value much greater than the average person would do. They just can’t bear to throw this stuff out, which all seems very logical.

I wanted to tie in this hoarding in a way that Grace imprisons herself. And there’s that theme of cages in the film, and Grace’s biggest problem is not just her hoarding but this self-imposed cage that she enforces upon herself.

There is a lot of lightness and darkness seen in this ‘70s set tale. Does it resemble the lightness and darkness of your childhood or your life in general? 

I think everyone’s lives have had moments where we’re melancholic, we feel misunderstood, no one understands us, and we feel lonely. So I try and create very believable, relatable characters, and I use the word empathy a lot, which is what it’s all about—getting the audience to put themselves in the character’s shoes. But I think as a stop-motion animator, I’ve always felt different, like the weird person within the industry. There’s not many of us doing what I do, maybe moreso overseas. But I’ve always, even as a child, felt like the odd one out. And I think, again, as kids, we often feel different, and we want to fit in.

And then, as adults, we sort of learn that it’s good to be different, and I enjoy being unusual. And I love eccentricity as well. I love reading about eccentrics. My mother’s quite eccentric. My father was an acrobatic clown, so he was quite eccentric. And I seem to be surrounded by interesting people.

Were there sort of challenges with the animating during this, particularly as there’s no CGI and this was all in-camera? 

We knew from the beginning that, like all my other films, we were going to attempt at the very least to do everything in-camera. It was challenging—things like fire and rain, rivers and oceans. We knew that if we were dedicated and we spent enough time planning, we’d be okay. A lot of these tricks and techniques stop-motion animators have been doing for decades.

But I think the audience appreciates the fact that what they’re looking at is handmade. And the pendulum has really swung back to films that have that handmade look about them. And I I think that’s to do with COVID. During COVID, everyone took up knitting and baking bread, and so that whole artisanal movement kicked in. And also, with AI on the horizon, there’s a bit of fear going on, understandably, so films that are handmade and have that handmade look suddenly have a greater appreciation at the moment.

Having said that, it comes down to the story. And animation’s a medium. It’s not a genre. And we could have told this film in 2D, or by computer, or maybe even live action. But I’m just one of those animators who can’t sit in front of a computer screen all day. I like to get my hands dirty, and so do the artists that we employ.

This film seems to be on the cusp of being a kid’s film; how do you think they would react to something that’s actually a bit more adult like this? 

It’s rated M, so it’s not for little kids at all. But it’s certainly, I would say, comfortable for teenagers for sure. And already we’re getting responses from teenagers who relate to Grace and Gilbert. And ironically, my films are taught in schools all around the world now, which was never an intention of mine, but they get taught as educational devices because they deal with subject matters like suicide and drug trafficking and being different.

As I say, animation’s not a genre. It’s a medium. And I think when I was growing up, animation was Bugs Bunny and Disney. I had no idea that there was all this Eastern European adult surrealist animation. So they do stuff that doesn’t even have a story or a plot. It’s just abstract stuff. And so I discovered there’s all this wonderful content for adults too. And, of course, now we have shows like The Simpsons and South Park; there’s a lot of stuff in those series that is not suitable for children, but children watch it anyway. But I don’t think if little kids did happen to accidentally watch this film, they would be traumatised, just a lot of the content would probably go over their head.