Movie Reviews
Memoir of a Snail movie review (2024) | Roger Ebert
What’s worse than the shells that other people place us in our lives? The shells that we place on ourselves. This idea of the intangible things that we carry on our backs like insecurity, depression, grief, and trauma is at the core of Adam Elliot’s moving stop-motion saga “Memoir of a Snail,” which is unlike any other animated film you will see this year. It’s a gorgeous film, but it’s also an emotionally intelligent movie, one that shifts and flows between comedy and tragedy, reminding us that life can only be lived forwards.
Sarah Snook of “Succession” fame delicately voices Grace, who is telling her life story to her favorite pet snail Sylvia after the death of the last person on Earth she cared about, her best friend Pinky (a wonderful Jacki Weaver). It’s a story of notable hardship. Mom died in childbirth. Dad was a paraplegic who didn’t live long enough to raise Grace or her twin brother Gilbert (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee in adulthood). The twins were split after dad passed, sending Grace to a pair of swingers—yes, this is a shockingly adult stop-motion movie, likely setting a new record for nudity in the form—and Gilbert to a family of religious fundamentalists on the other side of the country. Much of “Memoir of a Snail” consists of letters sent back and forth between Grace and Gilbert, vowing to return to each other as soon as they can escape the shells that life has placed on them.
Just because it’s stop-motion doesn’t mean “Memoir of a Snail” can’t be one of the most thematically dense films of the year. Elliot has crafted a whimsical world, one that feels inspired by the work of Marc Caro & Jean-Pierre Jeunet in films like “Delicatessen” and “Amelie”—an inspiration that gains even more likelihood with the inclusion of JPJ regular Dominique Pinon in the voice cast. There’s an exaggerated, fantasy aesthetic to some sequences, but it’s all grounded just enough in reality to allow its emotions to register. What I’m saying is don’t expect talking snails. This is a story of an ordinary life in many ways, made extraordinary in how beautifully it’s told. And while we’re on the technical acumen of this film, a brief aside to note one of the best scores of the year, by far, from Elena Kats-Chernin, so lovely that it almost becomes a character in the film. It’s essential to the spell this movie casts.
That spell is bursting to the seams with ideas, emotions, and references. It’s not every day you see a stop-motion animated film with nods to Sylvia Plath, Lord of the Flies, and Cahiers du Cinema, but the creator of the equally marvelous “Mary & Max” is also a phenomenal writer, something that is often underestimated in the visual form of animation. This is a carefully calibrated character arc—just as the bleakness of Grace’s story feels like it’s going to overwhelm you, Elliot pivots to revel in the unpredictable grace of life, reminding us that snails can’t move backwards, and neither can we. That’s kind of the point. Just when we think life is too much, a warm gesture from a stranger or a memory of a loved one or even just a good book or film can shift our perspective.
“Memoir of a Snail” is one of those tender films in which every frame and every line feels so carefully considered, and yet it’s somehow not over-written at the same time. Some may disagree and wish the film could allow for someone to emotionally catch their breath, but that’s not how a story like this works. By charting Grace’s entire life to this point, Elliot is allowed to explore so many different ideas from the childhood insecurity placed on Grace by bullies to Gilbert’s horrifically judgmental family to the way Pinky pushes away all of the things that try to hold her down. Pinky’s joie de vivre is essential to the success of “Memoir of a Snail,” a reminder of both Grace’s inherent kindness and how we must live every moment on this earth to the fullest.
Elliot’s script is so loaded with ideas that people will be able to take different aspects of it into their own lives, but it’s actually a line about Grace’s eventual husband that I’ll carry for a long time. His hobby is repairing broken pottery, but not in a way that hides that it was broken in the first place. “All things can be repaired, and our cracks celebrated.” When we discard the shells that we’ve placed on ourselves in life, we don’t do so easily. We can still see the cracks. But we can also choose to celebrate them.
This review was filed from Fantastic Fest. It opens on October 25th.
Desert Warrior, 2026.
Directed by Rupert Wyatt.
Starring Anthony Mackie, Aiysha Hart, Ben Kingsley, Ghassan Massoud, Sharlto Copley, Sami Bouajila, Lamis Ammar, Géza Röhrig, Numan Acar, Nabil Elouahabi, Hakeem Jomah, Ramsey Faragallah, Saïd Boumazoughe, and Soheil Bostani.
SYNOPSIS:
An honorable and mysterious rogue, known as Hanzala, makes himself an enemy of the Emperor Kisra after he helps a fugitive king and princess in the desert.
With aspirations of being a historical epic harkening back to the sword and sandal blockbusters of yesteryear, Rupert Wyatt’s seventeenth-century Arabia tale is about as generic and epically dull as one would expect from a film plainly titled Desert Warrior. Yes, there appear to be real locations here, and there are some admittedly sweeping shots of various tribes storming into battle on horseback and camels, but it’s all in service of a mess that is both miscast and questionable as the work of a filmmaking team of mostly white creatives.
The story of Emperor Kisraa (Ben Kingsley, a distracting presence even with only one or two scenes) rounding up women from other tribes to be his concubines, which inevitably became the catalyst for a revolution led by Princess Hind (Aiysha Hart), uniting all the divided clans and strategizing battle plans for flanking and poisoning, is undeniably ripe for cinematic treatment. The problem is that what’s here from Rupert Wyatt (and screenwriters Erica Beeney, Gary Ross, and David Self) is less than nothing in the primary creative process; no one seems to have a connection to Arabic heritage or culture, but they have made a flat-out boring film that is often narratively incoherent.
Following the death of her father and escaping the clutches of oppression, the honorable Princess Hind joins forces with a troubled, nameless bandit played by Anthony Mackie (he totally belongs here…), who seems to be here solely to give the movie some star power boost without running the risk of white savior accusations. Whatever the case may be, it’s jarring, but not quite as disorienting as how little screen time he has despite being billed as the lead and how little characterization he has. It is, however, equally disorienting as some of the other names that show up along the way.
As for the other factions, Princess Hind talks to them one by one, giving the film an adventure feel that fails to capitalize on using beautiful scenery in striking or visually poignant ways at almost every turn; the leaders of these tribes also often have no character. There also isn’t much of an understanding of why these tribes are at odds with one another. This movie is filled with dialogue that consistently and shockingly amounts to vague nothingness. Nevertheless, each tribe doesn’t take much convincing to begin with, meaning that not only is the film repetitive, but it’s also lifeless when characters are in conversation.
That Desert Warrior does occasionally spring to life, and a bloated 2+ running time is a small miracle. This is typically accomplished through the occasional fight scene between factions that also serves to demonstrate Princess Hind coming into her own as a warrior. When the tribes are united in a massive-scale battle, and that plan is unfolding step by step, one certainly sees why someone would want to tell this story and pull it off with such spectacle. However, this film is as dry as the desert itself.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist
‘4’, the opening track on Richard D James’ (Aphex Twin) self titled 1996 album is a piece of music that beautifully balances the chaotic with the serene, the oppressive and the freeing. It’s a trick that James has pulled off multiple times throughout his career and it is a huge part of what makes him such an iconic and influential artist. Many people have laid the “next Aphex Twin” label on musicians who do things slightly different and when you actually hear their music you realise that, once again, the label is flawed and applied with a lazy attitude. Why mention this? Well, it turns out we’ve been looking for James’ heir apparent in the wrong artform. We’ve so zoned in on music that we’ve not noticed that another Celtic son of Cornwall is rewriting an art form with that highwire balancing act between chaos and beauty. That artist is writer, director and composer Mark Jenkin who over his last two feature films has announced himself as an idiosyncratic voice who is creating his very own language within the world of cinema. Jenkin’s films are often centred around coastal towns or islands and whilst they are experimental or even unsettling, there is always a big heart at the centre of the narrative. A heart that cares about family, tradition, culture, and the pull of ‘home’. Even during the horror of 2022’s brilliant Enys Men you were anchored by the vulnerability and determination of its main protagonist.
This month sees the release of Jenkin’s latest feature film, Rose of Nevada, which is set in a fractured and diminished Cornish coastal town. One day the fishing boat of the film’s title arrives back in harbour after being missing for thirty years. The boat is unoccupied. And frankly that is all the information you are going to get because to discuss any more plot would be unfair on you and disrespectful to Jenkin and the team behind the film. You the viewer should be the one who decides what it is about because thematically there are so many wonderful threads to pull on. This writer’s opinions on what it is about have ranged from a theme of sacrifice for the good of a community to the conflict within when part of you wants to run away from your roots whilst the other half longs to stay and be a lifelong part of its tapestry. Is it about Brexit? Could be. Is it about our own relationships with time and our curation of memory? Could be. Is it about both the positives and negatives of nostalgia? Could be. As a side note, anyone in their mid-40s, like me, who came of age in the 1990s will certainly find moments of warm recognition. Is the film about ghosts and how they haunt families? Could be…I think you get the point.
The elements that make the film so well balanced between chaos and calm are many. It is there in the differing performances between the brilliant two lead actors George MacKay and Callum Turner. It is there in the sound design which fluctuates from being unbearably harsh and metallic, to lulling and warm. It is there in the editing where short, sharp close ups on seemingly unimportant factors are counterbalanced with shots that are held for just that little bit too long. For a film set around the sea, it is apt that it can make you feel like you’re rolling on a stomach churning storm one minute, or a calming low tide the next. Dialogue can be front and centre or blurred and buried under static. One shot is bathed in harsh sunlight whilst the next can be drowned in interior shadows.
Rose of Nevada is Mark Jenkin’s most ambitious film to date yet he has not lost a single iota of innovation, singularity of vision or his gift for telling the most human of stories. It is a film that will tell you different things each time you see it and whilst there are moments that can confuse or beguile, there is so much empathy and love that it can leave you crying tears of emotional understanding. It is chaotic. It is beautiful. It is life……
Rose of Nevada is released on the 24th April.
Mark Jenkin Instagram | Threads
Released through the BFI – Instagram | Facebook
Review by Simon Tucker
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