A few weeks ago, I watched a movie called Memoir of a Snail. It’s an Australian adult animated feature directed by an Australian director named Adam Elliot, and it stars Sarah Snook as the lead protagonist, Grace Pudel. I really loved Sarah Snook in the TV show Succession, in which she plays Siobhan “Shiv” Roy, who is part of a family that runs a multimillion-dollar media conglomerate called Waystar Royco. Logan Roy runs the media conglomerate, but he is getting on in years and needs to figure out which one of his kids is going to become the CEO of Waystar should he become incapacitated or pass away. Shiv is the only female sibling and competes with her three brothers, Kendall, Roman and Conner, to be the CEO. Shiv is an incredible actress (I did try to focus on Shiv’s character development throughout the show, but honestly while watching the show all I could focus on was how fashionable Shiv was. She was always wearing the best dresses and the best outfits throughout the show, and she is also an incredibly beautiful woman. And her ass is perfect. Just saying.) I would see HBO ads that showed the Succession poster, but I didn’t know much about the show. I just kept hearing about it all the time. Honestly, I started watching Succession because Sarah Snook got a bunch of awards for playing Shiv in the show, and when she won, I thought, Man, this gal must be an incredible actress. Also, I thought she was an American actress, but when she got her award and made her speech, I heard her accent and was like, What!! She’s Australian! That’s so cool! Before seeing Succession, I hadn’t seen Sarah Snook in any film or TV yet, but that’s because I haven’t seen a ton of Australian shows or movies. The one time I remember watching an Australian TV show was when I saw The Crocodile Hunter as a kid in the early 2000s. I want to see the movie Animal Kingdom, though, because I saw the trailer several years ago and it looked really good. I have seen Australian actors in movies before, but I hadn’t actually seen many movies that were funded and distributed from Australia. Memoir of a Snail is one of the few Australian films I’ve seen so far. In fact, I was so excited to be able to rent the movie on Google Play this week, because I checked the showtimes for my local Cinemark movie theater, but it wasn’t playing there. It was only playing in select theaters, and so I thought, Maybe I’ll go see the movie in theaters. But the showtimes either took place when I was at work, or the theater was too far away to drive to. I really loved the trailer, and it’s funny because when I first saw it, I thought it was going to be a children’s movie. But that’s because I saw the clean version of the trailer, the IFC teaser trailer. I found the Australian trailer that the production company Madman Films had put out, and it was uncensored. Halfway through the trailer, I saw a bully on the playground give Grace the middle finger, and I paused and was like, Woah, hold up…I thought this was a kid’s movie. Wait a minute…Is this a kid’s movie?!? Then the next scene showed an old lady dancing on a table and her hand accidentally hits the ceiling fan, and she loses her pinky finger. When that happened, girl, I immediately paused it and was like, What?!? We got kids giving middle fingers in the trailer and then a lady’s finger gets chopped off in graphic detail?!? Girl…what is the MPAA rating for this movie?!? This movie has got to be rated R. I have seen a few G to PG rated Claymation films, and not in one of them have I heard the term “dickhead” or seen limbs cut off (unless you’re watching the TV-MA-rated Robot Chicken, that is.) So, I looked up the rating and sure enough, I confirmed my findings. The film was, in fact, rated R, and, therefore, not a kids’ movie. Of course, I should have known, because when I watched the trailer again, I realized that those two Claymated guinea pigs that were sitting next to the couch were humping each other, and that’s how those little guinea pig babies multiplied. Sure, Rocky and Ginger fell in love in Chicken Run, but Pathe and Dreamworks were never going to show that Claymated British chicken and American rooster getting it on. They went straight to the “they hatched some kids and lived happily ever after” narrative because it was G for general audiences.
But MPAA ratings aside, this was seriously one of the best movies I have seen in my life so far. I knew it was going to be sad, but I thought when coming in, even after watching the trailer, oh, it will be this sweet happy story about a snail. Boy, I was WRONG. I cried throughout the movie. The minute they cued the Australian Chamber Orchestra in the opening credits, I was already an ugly-crying mess of tears and snot, and I didn’t have my tissues nearby, so I used my shirt collar. In the opening scene, Pinky, a dear friend of Grace, is dying, and she wakes up briefly to shout “THE POTATOES!” before passing away. Grace wonders, Wait, what does she mean by “the potatoes?” But Pinky is gone, and Grace is left to mourn the one friend who stuck with her through the wild ride of life that Grace is going to go through during the entire 1 hour and 35 minutes of the movie. Grace sits by Pinky’s Pity-Pit (Pinky’s gravestone) in Pinky’s garden, and she recounts to her snail friend, Sylvia, an account of her life (She named Sylvia the snail after the late American author Sylvia Plath.) Grace Pudel, grew up in 1970s Australia, and she has a twin brother named Gilbert, who always stands up for her and supports her through thick and thin. When Grace is bullied on the playground, Gilbert breaks the bully’s finger, and Gilbert, to Grace’s consternation, loves to play with pyrotechnics and fire. Like his dad, Gilbert wants to be an entertainer. Gilbert and Grace’s mom died shortly after giving birth to them, so they grew up with their dad, Percy, who had dreams of becoming a famous performer but had those dreams cut short when he got hit by a drunk driver. Percy was from France, and he attracted the attention of Grace and Gilbert’s mom, and they fell in love. After he became physically disabled, Percy became an alcoholic and also developed sleep apnea. But Gilbert and Grace did their best to support him. Percy loved knitting and jellybeans and had a jar full of them, and he and his kids loved to joke around, watch TV together, and sing songs in French. Gilbert and Grace bond over snails and watch in disgust as the snails get it on in their glass jar and produce lots of baby snails. Percy makes Grace a snail hat, and Grace takes on the identity of a snail.
However, he died in his sleep one evening, and Grace and Gilbert were left with no parents. A lady from child protection services took them away and sent them into separate foster homes, so they grew up apart. Grace spent her time being lonely and tried to make connections at school but was bullied and called a “rabbit face.” Even when she got older, she still dealt with loneliness. Grace was adopted by a couple named Ian and Narelle, who loved self-help books and positive thinking. They would shower Grace with praise and give her awards for being a good daughter, but all of their positive reinforcement did nothing to assuage Grace’s grief at being separated from her twin brother. Gilbert often writes letters to Grace about his foster family, Ruth and Owen, who run their own church and have Gilbert work on their apple orchard doing menial tasks. Ruth and Owen are hostile to Gilbert, and they make him eat meat even though he is a vegetarian. Gilbert promises to Grace that he will come and reunite with her, but as time goes on, Grace loses hope. However, while working at the Canberra Public Library, Grace meets a lady named Pinky, who keeps putting library books in the trash can, mistaking it for the library book chute. Pinky looks at Grace’s snail hat and asks her why she is dressed like an ant. Grace nervously tells her that she is a snail, but Pinky doesn’t make fun of her. Instead, she shares her own story about how she got the name “Pinky.” While she was dancing in Barcelona, she was dancing right under a ceiling fan, and her hand hit the ceiling fan, accidentally cutting off her pinky finger. Grace finds in Pinky someone who accepts her for who she is and doesn’t tell her she needs to change her identity to fit in, which is what Grace needs. Pinky is also willing to sit with Grace in her loneliness and just show up for her as a friend, rather than trying to find quick fixes for her loneliness like Ian and Narelle were trying to do. Pinky drives Grace around in a truck and also works as a school crossing guard (there’s a wild scene where a car rushes past Pinky and the kids, and Pinky shouts “Dickhead!” and then the other kids join her, putting up their middle fingers and shouting “Dickhead!” too.) She also takes Grace to get a perm, which looks like an Afro, to be perfectly honest (then again, it’s the 1970s, so Afros were probably all the rage in many places, not just in the United States of America.) While Grace and Pinky are sitting outside eating Chiko rolls, a guy drives past and teases Grace about her perm, and instead of flipping him off and calling him “dickhead” like Pinky would probably do, Grace is humiliated and cries. Pinky tells her to not pay attention to that dude and tells her that she and Grace look really cool with their perms.
Grace eventually finds love, in the form of a man named Ken. Ken seems sweet, and honestly, I had high hopes for Grace and Ken. Ken told her when they first met that he was a shallow person, though, and I thought, Hmmmm, okay? What does he mean by “shallow?” But, okay, I guess they’re happy together. Ken showers Grace with compliments and makes her feel loved, feeding her sausages and whipping her up milkshake after milkshake. Ken proposes to Grace after a month of dating, and she readily accepts. However, over time, Grace learns that Ken really is a shallow human being who only liked her for how he wanted her body image to be. He kept feeding her sausages and making her milkshakes to make her gain weight, and she doesn’t realize this until she finds one of the guinea pigs ruffling through the scrapbook on top of her shelf, and she finds a bunch of pictures that Ken has put of overweight or obese women and comments about their measurements and how much weight they needed to gain for him to find them sexy. Grace realizes that Ken only thought she was beautiful if she looked a certain way, and she throws him out of her house. On top of that, when they are about to get married, Grace receives a letter from Ruth telling her that Gilbert died in a fire. Ruth catches Gilbert kissing another boy and puts them both through this horrible electric conversion therapy, but Gilbert manages to escape and even sets free the pigs and birds that Ruth keeps in cages. Gilbert sets fire to the church building that Ruth and Owen run, and honestly, I cried buckets because I thought, Geez Louise, Grace and Gilbert have been through way too much. Do they have to go through more tragedy? Grace, thinking Gilbert is actually dead, starts hoarding more and more snail-themed stuff–snail statues, snail condoms, anything related to snails. It’s her way of dealing with grief. The house starts to pile with snail stuff, until finally Pinky comes to help out Grace in her time of need after Grace kicks Ken out. Pinky puts Grace on a diet to get her back to her normal weight and starts to get out more often. Unfortunately, Pinky develops dementia and passes away, leaving Grace to cope with her loneliness and despair alone. Pinky was the only person who Grace had left after her and Gilbert were separated, so now she feels like nothing will ever be the same. But Pinky motivated Grace to find what made her happy, and Grace realized that she really did want to become an animator and go to film school. She ends up making her own film and showing it at a film festival. Only a few people attend, and it seems like no one has questions during the Q and A part at the end of Grace’s movie, but then someone in the back raises their hand, and Grace recognizes that it’s Gilbert. I literally broke down sobbing so hard at this part, because I really thought Gilbert had died in the fire, but it turns out that he was able to escape the burning building and escape from Ruth and Owen’s farm. Grace ends up getting rid of all the snail trophies and stuff in her room, and she and Gilbert get to live together again. Even though they don’t have any other family, they have each other.
I could relate to this movie to some extent because I remember losing a dear friend of mine last year and grappling with the grief process. She was in her 70s and was so compassionate and energetic, and she always encouraged me to follow my passion of pursuing music, even when I wasn’t sure if I had what it took to make it as a musician. In 2023 I was depressed, I had quit my job the year before, and I was also feeling suicidal, like there was no point to living. However, I visited her in the hospital in the weeks leading up to her death, and she encouraged me through her life condition. Even though she was going through a much more serious life event than I was (i.e. she was going to die in a few weeks) getting to visit her gave me a different view on life and death. I was pretty careless with how I viewed my life. I often based my happiness on external achievements, like getting a boyfriend or getting admitted into a prestigious grad school or classical music program or leaving my job and making a six-figure income. However, as I continue to practice Buddhism, I am starting to see that while those things are fine to have, there are lots of people who go through heartbreak, rejection and many other life events that take them in a completely opposite direction than the one they envisioned for their lives. I took my life for granted so many times, and looking back, I can’t believe how selfish I was to think that my life was a waste of time and that I was better off not living. Because there were so many people around me who cared about me, including my dear friend. When Grace witnesses Pinky’s death at the beginning of the film and is crying, I cried along with her because it reminded me of when I lost my friend. When I attended my friend’s funeral, I wept and wept. I promised her I would not cry, but I failed to hold my tears in. I was in so much physical and emotional pain, and I just sat through the entire funeral weeping until my tear ducts were exhausted. Grief is a complex emotional experience, and no one chooses to grieve. People also grieve differently depending on their relationship with the person, but bottom line is that grief is a universal experience. I think that is why watching a movie like Memoir of a Snail was so cathartic
I really love how Grace and Pinky’s friendship develops through the course of the movie. Pinky reminds Grace to be her authentic self, and she is the only person Grace has left who she can truly trust. Pinky doesn’t judge Grace for being different because Pinky is true to herself and also has a lot of life experience, so when Grace feels like she cannot move forward in life because she is experiencing grief, separation from her brother, and loneliness, Pinky reminds her that life isn’t about looking backwards, but instead it’s about looking forwards. I have always loved befriending older people, especially in college because I didn’t feel like I fit in with everyone in my peer group. I didn’t have social media, and I was introverted, and somehow, I thought there was some perfect way I had to be throughout college in order to fit in with others. But in my junior year, I remember having a friend who was in her 60s. She had so much wisdom and life experience, and she, like me, was an introvert. I was feeling really depressed at the time and didn’t feel comfortable opening up to others about my depression. I felt so ashamed that I was going through it that I didn’t want to seek professional help for it, but somehow, I had developed trust in this older friend of mine. She listened to me and was able to sit with me and show up fully, even if I was sharing a vulnerable moment with her discussing my battles with depression. She helped me understand that I had a profound mission in my life and that I was going through this experience so that I could encourage others who were experiencing similar struggles. Befriending this woman was an incredible treasure I will cherish forever, and she encouraged me to be true to my authentic self, too, which is what I needed to hear because I often focused so much on being liked by everyone, but deep down I really didn’t like myself. I thought, Maybe, if I was more outgoing, people would like me more, but as I get older, I am starting to realize that not everyone is going to like me, but if that’s the case then it’s not the end of the world. That’s just life. I also love that, even though Grace decluttered her snail memorabilia, she still kept the snail hat that her late dad knitted her when she and Gilbert were kids. That was just such a beautiful and touching moment.
The movie also made me think of this concept in Buddhism called “cherry, plum, peach and damson,” which emphasizes that each person is unique, and that each person should be true to themselves. Grace spends a lot of her time alone, and even when she tries to be friendly with people and come out of her shell, people ignore her and bully her. Growing up, she was bullied a lot and her twin brother, Gilbert, often came to her rescue and beat up the bullies, but after they are separated, Grace has to navigate loneliness and being ostracized pretty much on her own. She ends up staying home a lot and collecting snail-related stuff because it reminds her of her dad and Gilbert, but she ends up feeling only lonelier because she feels disconnected from other people around her. That’s why her friendship with Pinky is so special. Pinky didn’t care what other people thought of her, even if people thought she was eccentric. She fully embraced Grace for who she was rather than doing what other people did and alienating her. As a kid, I really loved going to activities at my local SGI Buddhist center because I was accepted for who I was. I struggled with low self-esteem in middle school, but when I attended SGI meetings, I met other young people who were also struggling with the same things I was struggling with in middle school, fitting in, self-confidence, and loneliness being just a few of them. It was one of the few spaces where I felt I could be truly my introverted artistic self around people who were also encouraged to be their authentic selves. My mentor, Daisaku Ikeda (1928-2023), always encourages people, especially young people, to live true to themselves. The cherry, peach, plum and damson trees are each unique, and just as cherry trees can’t become peach trees, plum trees can’t become cherry trees. We all have different personalities, likes and dislikes, but we all have a unique path to pursue in life and need to follow our own paths in life.
To be honest, even at 31, I’m still figuring out my personality, my identity and my values as a human being. At first, I pressured myself to figure out who I was in such a short time, but as I get older, I realize that you can’t really rush that process of figuring out your own path in life and you can’t compare your path in life to anyone else’s. Of course, this is much easier said than done, but it’s true. I can’t compare my path in life to anyone else’s. I have to follow my own path and be true to myself, because I want to encourage other people, especially young people, to be true to themselves, too.
The Arts Are Life 