WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE (2009)

Posted by Stephen Jannise

This is a review of my third (that’s right, third) viewing of Where the Wild Things Are, which should give you an idea of how much I adore this film. What can I say about director Spike Jonze? He has made only three feature-length films in the past ten years, and all three have been masterpieces well worth the wait. However, where the first two films, Being John Malkovich (1999) and Adaptation (2002), were meta-observances about the struggles of artistic individuals, whether they be actor, screenwriter, or puppeteer, to find meaning in their work, relationships, and life in general, Where the Wild Things Are shifts its focus to look at a child’s first steps toward maturation. Considering that the film is about the moment when children discover that their imaginations are no longer safe places to hide from their troubles and thus begin to take responsibility for their actions, it seems inaccurate to call it a “children’s film;” after all, it is about a period in the growth process that the children in the audience will not have reached yet, while the adults in the audience will remember it all too well. Even so, as they did with the original book written by Maurice Sendak, children will ultimately find comfort and reassurance in this film, particularly in the way it promises that, after a long day’s rumpus, you can go home and find, as Sendak writes on the book’s simple but moving final page, that someone has kept your supper warm for you.

Max catches a ride, in versions old and new.

Indeed, Jonze and co-writer Dave Eggers have done an amazing job at extending Sendak’s original work for the screen. Much ado has been made about the necessity, or lack therein, of adaptaing what many feel is a perfectly concise book into a feature-length film. I certainly cannot argue with the praise given to Sendak’s classic; in just a few pages, most of them entirely covered with illustrations of young Max’s last rumpus with the wild things of his imagination, Sendak provides a sincere and recognizable account of the last throes of childhood. However, the merit of the original work should not prevent talented filmmakers from bringing it to the screen; these are, in the end, the same tired complaints leveled at most adaptations (The Road has dealt with its fair share). Jonze and Eggers have created their own triumph by blending their unique sensibilities with the events from the book and elements from one of the most successful and beloved child-escapes-into-imagination movies of all time, The Wizard of Oz.

I am surely not the first to recognize the many resemblances to Oz that permeate this film. The 1939 film opens with Dorothy wandering around her farm, desperately trying to get someone’s attention. After everyone turns out to be too busy to spend time with her (there is a Depression on, after all), she sings about her wish to go to a happier, more colorful land, and in a few minutes, she’s there. Although, in Sendak’s book, we never meet Max’s mother or even know about a gentleman caller, a sister, or her friends, Jonze and Eggers introduce us to these new characters in an opening sequence that mirrors the one in Oz. In fact, there is a brief moment during which Max overhears his mother, the ever-reliable Catherine Keener, talking with a business partner about how she has to sell this next order or else she won’t know what to do, a reference to this little Depression we are in now that ties the film even closer to Oz. Max, upset with his mother for turning her attentions to a new boyfriend and with his sister for abandoning him for friends her own age, runs away from home and travels to his own imaginary destination, setting sail for an island of wild things where Dorothy hitched a ride on a tornado over the rainbow.

Max and Dorothy agree: Let's get the hell out of here.

With each viewing, it will become clearer and clearer how reliant this island is upon Max’s thoughts and memories, it being a figment of his imagination after all. Like Dorothy’s Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion, each Wild Thing is a mirror image of Max’s self or of the Others with which he lives. Carol, endearingly voiced by James Gandolfini, is really Max himself, an angry troublemaker who just wishes everyone could be together always, which is why he is upset with KW (Lauren Ambrose), the young, female Wild Thing who represents the sister that Max feels is slipping away. In fact, the KW character is a fine example of how much care Jonze and Eggers put into the creation of these characters. After watching his sister’s friends cruelly destroy his snow igloo early on in the film, of course Max would imagine KW’s two new friends as dumb, squawking owls named Bob and Terry. And whereas the other Wild Things initially know Max only as The King, KW somehow knows his name is Max from the very beginning. She must really be paying attention to him.

KW tells Max that she'll eat him up, she loves him so. Just what he wants to hear.

These little touches and others like them may not be immediately noticeable, which is why you will continue to find little details to love each time you watch the film. You’ll recognize how frequently the nonsensical dialogue is shaped with the limited but violently expressive vocabulary of a child (Carol threatening to bite his own feet off if he doesn’t get his way seems to always get a laugh). And as certain scenes settle into your memory, others will begin to stand out more clearly, until eventually you begin to realize how perfectly the film has been constructed. By the end of the film, I get that heavy feeling in my chest that happens on those rare occasions when a film has affected me not with easy sentimentality but with genuine sadness, some kind of longing. As Max begins to sail back home to his waiting mother, he and Carol share one last howl, and you get the sense that he is saying goodbye to his Wild Things for the last time. And you remember when you said goodbye to your own.