“It’s nice to do together, because it’s well-intentioned,” Jenny Slate says in a 2011 interview with Brian Williams (who also seems only too eager to appear in the full-length film version of Marcel the Shell With Shoes On). She’s referring to working on the creation of Marcel the Shell with her then-fiancé, Dean Fleischer-Camp, and addressing the unexpected virality of the character at a time when “going viral” was still somewhat germinal. The two happily appear in the interview as Marcel’s “supportive parents,” birthing him into the world only to end up no longer believing in themselves as a “project.” Nonetheless, they never stopped believing in their “love child,” nor were they able to ignore the hearts that Marcel has touched over the past decade.
Evidently, this is not something Slate and Fleischer-Camp could forget just because their own marriage dissolved in 2016 (perhaps having cursed themselves by marrying in the “end of the world” year of 2012). The feature-length film might have been nothing more than the seed of an idea in 2014, when Slate and Fleischer-Camp released the third short installment in conjunction with the second illustrated book about Marcel. But perhaps the project was sidelined when Slate found her name rising to more mainstream prominence after the release of 2014’s Obvious Child.
What’s more, working on something with an ex can often bring up some painful and/or bittersweet memories, a topic that seems to be openly addressed in the A24-backed movie (Slate having found a home there, it seems, after also showing up in a small but memorable role in Everything Everywhere All At Once). For it is Dean, meta-ly playing the documentarian staying in the Airbnb where Marcel lives, that speaks (albeit rather reluctantly) on his recent breakup and how things don’t always work out, even when you love someone.
His loneliness appears to match Marcel’s, who once took great pleasure in living among his shell community. Indeed, the timing of the film’s theme seems almost too coincidental to not have been somehow spurred by the isolating effects of coronavirus. But then, Marcel has always been a character reflective of Slate’s own “hippie-dippy” beliefs in the collective’s connection to one another and the universe. Unlike Slate, however, most people have fallen prey to the ease and comfort of cynicism. Which is why Marcel is so captivating, possessing the quality that most people dispense with sooner and sooner in life: “finding magic in the everyday.”
Marcel’s reliance on community for this very ability is put in jeopardy when he loses all the members of his shell family after an argument ensues between the couple the shells live with (again, this also feels like a pointed plot construction reflecting of Slate and Fleischer-Camp’s own relationship demise). Known for hiding in the sock drawer for safety when things between the couple become too caustic, the shells couldn’t have anticipated that the male in the permutation would abruptly grab all his shit from the drawer, shells included, and shove it into a suitcase to depart in a huff.
This leaves only Nonna Connie (voiced by the inimitable Isabella Rossellini) behind as a companion. As her first appearance onscreen (she never showed up in the shorts), Connie adds a much-needed sagacity to Marcel’s jejune perspective on things. Far more substantial in presence and girth than Marcel, she has the aura of calm one would expect from someone who gardens regularly. Which she does, guiding the lost-soul insects that stop by unexpectedly.
Granted, Connie has been in existence in some form since 2014. After the success of the short videos, Slate and Fleischer-Camp released two illustrated books, one in 2011 (called Marcel the Shell With Shoes On: Things About Me) and another in 2014 (called Marcel the Shell: The Most Surprised I’ve Ever Been). It was in the second book that Connie becomes central to the plot and the core of Marcel’s outlook on life is acknowledged in the lines, “One thing about a new day—you absolutely never know where it will go. Even if you know where it starts.” That’s Polyanna-level positivity right there. Except Marcel is far more palatable to listen to. The things he says being so pure and unhindered by a fear of sounding “stupid” that they end up having an unexpected air of profundity.
Dean, too, is taken with this, and proceeds to film him for a documentary he then uploads to YouTube (yes, it all sounds very familiar, doesn’t it?). The masses are equally as smitten with Marcel’s fresh, innocent perspective on things, yet, it doesn’t take long for Marcel to realize that having “fans” is hardly a substitute for being part of an actual community as he used to be. In this sense as well, Slate makes a commentary on the vacuity and emptiness of fame in the long-run. How hollow it is compared to sharing a genuine connection with people as opposed to the parasocial dynamic that being a “celebrity” or “online sensation” cultivates.
Throughout the “lockdown age” (not a true lockdown for some) of the pandemic, many became well-acquainted with the loss or compromise of something that couldn’t translate to the online sphere. The absence of tactility and tangibility that Zoom embodied (granted, many were only too happy to not have to be physically near a certain cunt at their office). It’s an absence that, to be honest, has only intensified in a post-corona climate, regardless of restrictions being “lifted.” Because, truthfully, the damage to our connections with people, particularly in the United States, were sealed when literally every facet of society became about “getting ahead” via the absurd construct of capitalism. And it bears remarking that perhaps Marcel can afford to be so happy and pure because he exists outside of that system.
In this regard, one can’t help but view Marcel the Shell With Shoes On as an undercutting plea for us all to return to that community-based form of living that pre-dated capitalism’s hold. Having a decentralized “economic network” based on one’s location and enclave rather than some overarching and diabolical institution (often called the federal government) overseeing and controlling everything despite having no connection to or real vested interest in it. Or perhaps that’s as naïve a vision to hope for as something Marcel might come up with. Either way, the film version of his world captures, in so many ways, the reasons behind human loneliness even more than shell loneliness. And, after all, aren’t most humans shells of themselves these days anyway?
