The Story
Let the Wild Rumpus Start!--A review
In Where the Wild Things Are, director Spike Jonze collaborates with celebrated author Maurice Sendak to bring one of the most beloved children’s books to the silver screen. In a visually stunning adaptation of the classic tale about childhood and the places kids go to escape the cruelties of the world, Jonze dares to explore an emotionally challenging point of view on the classic bedtime story. Instead of the cliché Hollywood fluff that has settled on family movies, Jonze mixes childhood whimsy with a calculated amount of adult cynicism, a result that may or may not please the audience, but one that certainly dramatizes the conflict in the lives of children and adults.
The film tells the story of Max, a rambunctious and sensitive boy who feels misunderstood at home. Played dynamically by a precocious Max Records, young Max lands on an island where he meets mysterious and strange creatures whose emotions are as wild and unpredictable as their actions. Armed with his wolf suit talisman, Max becomes king of the land and the Wild Things, promising to create a place where everyone can be happy. In a particularly poignant moment, one of the sagacious Wild Things, proclaims that “happiness isn’t always the best way to be happy.” With that foreboding omen, the story takes off, filled with emotionally wrought sojourns in the psyche of the Wild Things.
Without a doubt, Where the Wild Things Are is one of the most beautiful films AMP has ever showcased. The film wisely chooses a neutral color palate so as not to compete with the extravagance of Max’s fantasy. In addition the Wild Things themselves are six to eight foot tall puppets with CGI faces. The puppets themselves hearken back to characters like Yoda in Star Wars or Ludo in Labyrinth. This realism transports the audience from their seats into the film, complete with an attack of childhood nostalgia.
The island of the Wild Things itself seems to have sprung to life from the imagination of a child. Its landscape spans grassy beaches to a dune riddled desert to a dense, deciduous forest. To view this film is to experience a depth of fantasy that most adults left behind with their training wheels and pogo sticks. However, Where the Wild Things Are is a movie that is, paradoxically, too grow-up to be understood by children but pleasantly child-like enough in appearance to be enjoyable for them. It is this combination that is so captivating, and one that makes the film perfect for the college aged student.
When the movie was released in 2009, Jonze’s adaptation was often criticized as too adult for a family movie. As a recreation of a beloved children’s story, many believed the film would be a light family comedy. This is not the case, and I would go as far to say that this is not a movie for children. Filled with themes of alienation, frantic camera movements, and filming from the point of view of a lonely child, Spike Jonze has created not a masterpiece of the family genre but an insightful film about the mental journeys people take to protect themselves from emotional damage.
In Where the Wild Things Are, childhood pain and suffering transition to adult angst and fear so seamlessly that even I was caught off guard. In one particular scene, Max has been swallowed by KW, voiced by Lauren Ambrose, in order to protect him from a rampaging Carol, voiced by the ever charismatic actor James Gandolfini. While sitting in KW, Max has both a literally and figuratively internal conversation about his disastrous reign as King of the Wild Things.
For the adults in the crowd, the fight about Max and his resulting realization that he can’t fix this world is shocking, and, even sitting in the Sadler Center’s Commonwealth Theater, the general murmurings of the crowd seemed to indicate that they too were shocked. What had appeared to be a sweet generalization about childhood fantasy had become an allegory for the real world. However, the movie is so visually stunning and seamlessly done, that I believe a savvy viewer will look at Spike Jonze’s directing as a beautiful interpretation of a poignant and too often saccharin-sweet life lesson about the cruelty of the real world.