SUNDANCE OPENING NIGHT CELEBRATES 25 YEARS

Kicking off the 25th anniversary of the Sundance Film Festival Thursday, Sundance Institute founder Robert Redford welcomed a capacity crowd to the opening night world premiere of Adam Elliot’s Mary and Max at the Eccles Theater in Park City.

In his remarks, Redford briefly recapped the history of the festival and expressed optimism about the incoming Obama administration, saying “I think this can be a very exciting time for artists” as the nation’s priorities begin to shift, then introduced Mary and Max writer-director-animator Elliot, whose 2003 Harvie Krumpet won an Oscar for best animated short film after screening at Sundance.

Another traditional stop-motion claymation film, Mary and Max is Elliot’s feature debut. Work on the 92-minute film took more than a year to complete, with all the character and background elements hand-crafted by Elliot and his co-animators. It marks both the first fully animated title and first Australian film to open Sundance.

Elliott based his script of a 1970s pen pal friendship between Mary (voiced by Toni Collette), a lonely Australian girl, and Max, a neurotic, middle-aged New Yorker (voiced by Philip Seymour Hoffman), on his own youthful correspondence with his American pen friend. The story tracks their parallel challenges with growing up and growing older, switching back and forth between Australian and New York settings.

The film is a wonder of stop-motion artistry, with each character movement and change of scenery individually crafted. Elliot contrasts the settings with a brown color scheme for Australia and grey for New York — palettes that add resonance to the characters’ challenging life situations.

Unfortunately, the epistolary structure creates an episodic storyline that gradually drags on the narrative momentum, although Collette and Hoffman are consistently enjoyable as the lead characters. While the film strives for an embracing humanism, the final scenes are overly downbeat.

Too adult for children and too childish for adults, Mary and Max looks unlikely to reach US theatrical audiences (Icon is selling international rights), but should enjoy a healthy run as a festival staple throughout the year.

A comfortably crowded party followed the screening at Park City’s Legacy Lodge, where filmmakers mingled with sponsors, press, audience members and festival staff. The mood was buoyant despite talk of lighter attendance and a lower-key atmosphere this year — expectations still awaiting validation.

Mary and Max leads off 10 days of screenings, panels, parties and public events, and with mild, sunny weather in Park City, turnout should be enthusiastic.