It’s easy to get swept up in the dynamism of life—constantly rushing, always in pursuit of something. We seldom pause for self-reflection. But for Grace Pudel, the lead character in new film Memoir of a Snail, that rare moment of stillness comes in an unexpected way—through a conversation with a snail. 

And so the film decrees: “Life can only be understood backwards, but we have to live it forwards.” Director Adam Elliot’s latest offering is a dark yet heart-warming story centered around Grace (voiced by Sarah Snook), who makes sense of a traumatic childhood through conversations with her pet snail Sylvia. Elliot reflects, “I was looking for an animal that was metaphorical of Grace’s psyche...You touch their antennas, and they retract into their shells. And that’s what Grace is sort of doing her whole life. Also the swirls on snails shells as a motif of life going full circle. Snails are so alien, and they’re always moving forward.” 

The luminary animator spent three years writing 16 drafts of the script before proceeding to the scrupulous process of stop motion production: storyboarding each scene, building the miniatures and sets, and ultimately photography—a total of over 100,000 frames in order to complete the animation. 

Even with meticulous and painstaking planning, Elliot differentiates the style of stop motion from CGI animation in its allowance for “happy accidents” during the animation process. “There’s a little bit of room for spontaneity and improvisation and serendipitous moments,” says Elliot. “An animator will get halfway through the day and spend all this time getting the character to walk, and then suddenly an ear will drop off, and the animator has to decide: Do they abandon the shot, or do they keep going?”

The stop-motion maestro built an impressive mantle of awards over the last decade and a half. His films, meticulously crafted frame-by-frame in a whimsical style that he describes as “chunky wonky,” have garnered nominations and wins including for Harvie Krumpet, which took home the 2004 Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. 

Memoir of a Snail, which had its theatrical release in October, is yet another deadpan yet pleasantly whimsical offering from Elliot as he forges ahead in the unique, timeless style of stop-motion animation. Like the characters in his film, where he’s going is not so much about where he’s been, but the possibility of what lies ahead. 

Written by Isaac Dektor

All Images Courtesy Of Andrew Railton.

Sketches Courtesy Of Adam Elliot.