Suffering abounds in Adam Elliot’s dark and deadpan films. The Melbourne animator’s claymation characters overdose and lose testicles or imbibe on an array of poisons; they are assailed by strokes and lightning strikes. These beloved underdogs, the Oscar-winning film-maker says, are studies in human imperfection: “I’ve realised my films are about perceived flaws that often aren’t actually flaws.”
Elliot won his Oscar for the 2003 short film Harvie Krumpet, introducing the world to his surprisingly whimsical style. Global attention followed, and his first feature, 2009’s Mary and Max, starred Toni Collette, voicing a little girl who begins a pen pal friendship with the late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Max, a New Yorker with Asperger syndrome.
