Where The Wild Things Are
Warner Bros. Pictures
PG
110 Minutes
2009
I love movies. I love the way they transport us to other lands. I love they way they prey on our fears. I love the way they tug on our heart strings. I love when they weave complex, thought-provoking stories and when they make us laugh ourselves silly.
Every once in a while, however, I see a film that transcends being a mere movie. It sticks with me hours after I've left the theater, and I find myself pondering every scene. It speaks to me on a deep, emotional level and has a profound impact on me. These films are rare, and sadly few and far between, but I always know them when I see them. I can feel it as I sit in the darkened theater, trying unsuccessfully to quell he flood of emotions rising within me so that complete strangers won't see me blubbering like a newborn.
Director Spike Jonze's enrichment of Maurice Sendak's classic children's story Where The Wild Things Are is just such a film and the first to be added to that very short list of motion pictures that left me stunned, speechless, and with a tsunami of feelings swirling inside since 2004's Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.
I used to make my mother, who attended the IMAX screening with me tonight, read Sendak's book to me on an almost nightly basis as a young child. My copy of the book was handed down to me by my older brother years after he'd received it as an infant, making it a cherished gift, and as a child I loved it simply for its beautiful artwork and creative creature designs.
As I got older, I understood what the book truly represented - the bond between family, the unconditional love of a mother for her child, no matter how bad they can be, and the near-limitless imagination children possess before their adult lives rob them of their sense of wonder. Sendak's book is so much more than ten sentences and cool pictures. It says more in fewer words than possibly any other book, and that is why it has become a favorite of not only children upon their first introduction to its world, but the adults who are introducing their children to it in the first place - just as they had been many years before. Where The Wild Things Are sticks with us because, deep down, we all wish we could go back to that simpler time, and also because we can all relate to it.
In my youth, I had more than my share of Max moments. My mother, who sat next to me in the theater just as she used to sit at my bedside to read to me, put up with my antics with the patience of a saint. The poor woman would get home from a full day on her feet at the clinic where she worked, then prepare dinner for her husband and two children for several more hours. But that still wasn't enough. She would run us all over town on a whim, and on those rare occasions where she was too tired to do so, I would pout and annoy her until she would cave in.
I understand why she put up with me. Much like Max's mother in the story, my mother loves me unconditionally. No matter how badly I'd misbehave, she always forgave me and often the hardest part of dealing with my childish antics was the guilt she felt for punishing me. I deserved it, but my mother is such a loving soul that she actually felt bad for being a good parent.
Perhaps that is why, right at the opening frames of Where The Wild Things Are, I began to cry. I saw myself in Max as he tore down the stairs, chasing the family dog with no regard for his house. I welled up again when he tried to coax his older sister off the phone to see the igloo he'd built and she refused, telling him to play with his own friends. You can see the dejection on Max's face, much like I felt when my older brother would shun me in our youth. I teared up several more times throughout the remainder of the movie, and each time it was something I had experienced in my own childhood.
What Spike Jonze has accomplished with Where The Wild Things Are is something monumental; something that I don't feel has ever been captured so honestly and so accurately on film before. He has captured exactly what it is to be a young child, and those primal emotions we feel. The fear, the anger, the desire for attention, the resentment and loneliness. How he did it, I don't know, but I think a lot of it can be credit to the film's star, young Max Records. The film explains why we act out, and it's all encapsulated perfectly in Records when he dons his wolf suit and becomes a holy terror for his poor, frustrated, but ultimately infinitely loving mother (the ever-talented Catherine Keener).
It has been said in so many other reviews, but it's true that Records isn't acting here. He's just being a kid. His father is nowhere to be found, his older sister is growing up and is off doing her own thing, and his mother has to divide her attention between her work, her children, and her new boyfriend. Max, as a character, has trouble coping and he lashes out, as so many children do, and Records brings this all to life without a hint of disingenuity.
I've come this far into the review, and I haven't even mentioned the Wild Things themselves yet. Artistically, they are nothing short of remarkable, staying true to the original designs of the beasts from the book. However, what truly brings them to life isn't the amazing suits covered with layers of fur or the incredibly expressive digital faces. It's the actors who lend their voices to them, beginning with James Gandolfini.
The Wild Things clearly represent pieces of Max's personality, as well as his life in general. Carol (Gandolfini) is a quick-tempered, destructive ball of anger. KW is equal parts Max's mother and sister. She wants to leave the rest of the Wild Things and spend time with her new friends, and she is exhausted from the effort of trying to hold the family of creatures together. Carol fears KW's abandonment, and like Max, whenever he doesn't get his way, he begins destroying the creatures' own homes.
Then there is Alexander (Paul Dano), a soft-spoken goat-like creature who feels shunned and ignored by the others. There's an obvious parallel between him and Max in the scene where a dirt war brings him to tears, much like Max during an early-moment snowball fight that ends in the destruction of his igloo by his sister's older friends. Meanwhile, the dependable Chris Cooper lends his voice to Douglas, the most sensible of the Wild Things at heart, but who spends much of the movie giving in to Carol's wishes.
Judith (Catherine O'Hara) represents Max's most cynical and insecure side, finding fault in everything and feeling like Max favors the other creatures. The enigmatic creature known only as the Bull could represent Max's mother, usually watching as the others engage in their activities with a worndown, exhausted look.
Where The Wild Things Are enriches Sendak's book, adding a whole new layer of subtext to the creatures themselves. There are scenes of Max frolicking with them, but the scenes in which he sees himself in their actions and begins to understand his mother's feelings are truly moving. It builds upon the theme of the book, while never straying too far from its basic concept.
This isn't a film for young children and families looking for a rip-roaring good time or a free-spirited adventure. It could have been, had anyone other than Jonze directed it. It was well publicized that the director and the studio had different visions about what this film should become, and in the end Jonze won out and the film, as well as its viewers, are better off for it. This could have been some schlocky childrens' flick with low-brow jokes and kooky pratfalls. They could be marketing stuffed Wild Thing dolls to children everywhere, and I don't think I even need to mention the obvious music tie-ins.
Instead, we have a moving, heartfelt, genuinely honest and artistic portrayal of a child coping with feelings he doesn't quite understand and a broken family. This is Max's movie, and the Wild Things are extensions of himself. We're seeing the world through his eyes and from his perspective. I was initially very apprehensive about Spike Jonze directing this film. I had visions of fish-eye lens shots and crazy, wacky dance routines set to the tune of "Born To Be Wild" (oops, there's the mention...). In the film's opening frames, all those fears dissipated and I was left with the stark realization that no one other than Jonze could've made this film, and it couldn't have been done any other way. To make it a more traditional family film, filled with cliched sentiments and contrived gags, would be doing it - and the book it is based on - a disservice.
Where The Wild Things Are, the film, is every bit as special to me as the book was and has remained since I was introduced to it in my youngest days. This is exactly what I hoped it would be - a serious, touching picture that treats its source material with the utmost care and respect. There isn't a moment of this film that was anything other than beautiful in my eyes, and I spent much of the 30 minute drive home from the theater reflecting on it and finding myself overwhelmed by what it made me feel. Some critics have argued that it's boring and uneventful, and perhaps that is a byproduct of unrealistic expectations. More likely, I think it's a case of an adult who has forgotten what it was to be a child; a heart that has been filled with cynicism and a mind that has lost the sense of magic that only a child's imagination can truly conjure. It may be a distant memory for me too, but this film - if only for 110 minutes - reminded me of my days parading around my house, demanding to be taken to the video store to rent a new video game. It reminded me of building forts out of dining chairs and bedsheets in my living room, and igloos in my backyard while my older sibling shoveled the snow. I was reminded of when my mother fell in love again, and that same feeling of resentment, entitlement, and abandonment I felt because dinner was not being prepared while she was on the phone with the man who would one day become her new husband - and the shame I felt when I realized how terrible it was of me not to be so happy for a woman who had already given everything she could to her children.
Where The Wild Things Are is one of those films that transcends being a mere movie, or any label I can place on it. I can call it a masterpiece, brilliant, genius, or any number of adjectives, but it does not adequately describe just how it made me feel. It's the sort of thing that cannot be explained, so all I can really tell you is to go to the theater and experience it for yourself.
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