Where the Wild Things Are
Director: Spike Jonze
Writers: Screenplay by Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers, based on the book by Maurice Sendak
Producers: John B. Carls, Gary Goetzman, Tom Hanks, Vincent Landay, Maurice Sendak
Stars: Max Records, Catherine Keener, and featuring the vocal talents of James Gandolfini, Paul Dano, Catherine O’Hara, Forest Whitaker, Michael Berry Jr., Chris Cooper, Lauren Ambrose
People don’t remember the urges of childhood. We ran and we screamed and we flailed and we wanted; we wanted so desperately. Why? What was the logic behind those times when we were unwise and unrestrained? It is a mystery we gloss over or ignore, yet matters so much to who we are.
And we can’t trust movies to get it right most of the time. Children in the majority of Hollywood product talk like little adults and betray an adult’s wide perspective. Most filmmakers forget – or just don’t want to face – how agonizing it could be when your world was the exact size of yourself and Mommy, and Mommy was busy.
Not so Spike Jonze’s film of Maurice Sendak’s childhood classic Where the Wild Things Are, which does right by its source material not simply by filming its story, but by translating its truths to the screen. This is a movie about our mighty and inchoate feelings, and how they inspire the bewildering actions that get us sent to our room without our supper. It is painful, and beautiful, and absolutely right.
Sendak’s book is beloved worldwide, but this by no means made the film a safe bet. It is, after all, only ten sentences long. So much had to work out in order to achieve the vision conceived by Jonze and screenplay collaborator Dave Eggers, and that includes the expanding of those ten sentences into a script for a 100-minute film without stuffing it full of irrelevancy.
As in the book, young Max (Max Records) snaps the patience of his mother (Catherine Keener), and leaves home for a faraway island occupied by 8-foot-tall furry monsters. In the film they are made from a combination of Muppetry and computer animation, and that mixture had to blend so smoothly as to disappear. And it does – these creatures emote breathtakingly. Some of the actors recording their dialogue are more recognizable than others, but what is common among them is how seriously they give voice to the Wild Things – these are not antic cartoon performances, but exposed ones, sometimes betraying deep and immediate anguish. There is a reason they are called “growing pains”.
The Wild Things, loudest among them Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini), declare Max their King after he tells some tall tales about his powers, and for awhile all is play and joy, and ambitions to feel this happy and alive forever. But soon their problems emerge – the jealousy and loneliness, the messy misunderstandings and hurt feelings, Carol’s rage and grief that the nurturing K.W. (Lauren Ambrose) keeps leaving to be with others whom he doesn’t understand. There is a Freudian reading to the fantasy, including a moment when Max all-but-literally returns to the womb for protection.
That is not a criticism but an acknowledgment of how impressively the filmmakers conceived of a mechanism for carrying their theme – that this vast, strange, faraway place is where Max can see and understand himself and the people in his real life. Those symbols are concealed by the immediacy of its sensations; this movie wants to be thrillingly experienced, not analyzed.
In any cinematic world, sometimes the most difficult look to construct is the natural one, but Jonze is, as always, fortunate to have his long-time cinematographer Lance Acord behind the camera. Just as in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, which he also filmed, his frame is not just a window on the story but a living conveyor of its energy. When we are with Max in a snow fort he has built for games in the neighborhood, or in his room as his restless imagination keeps him awake, or as he explores the home of the Wild Things, we never feel detached, but rather plunged into curiosity, or wonder, or exhilarating frenzy, or sadness; such sharp sadness.
And this means, since he is on-screen for nearly the entire film, that the absolutely most important element to get right was the casting of Max. And in this the filmmakers have not just succeeded but conquered. Records is uncannily honest – thoughtful then hysterical, selfish then sympathetic. He makes such heartbreaking mistakes with such commitment and sincerity.
One should never make the disrespectful blunder of describing an actor’s work as having no artifice – Records, even for his age, is a professional performer with an awareness of camera acting technique. But his instincts are astounding; his natural state of being present and fearless in scenes that depict the imperfect, often infuriating refusal of children to behave in a way that makes sense to us.
If you can remember the times when you were out-of-control, when you cried for reasons you no longer understand, or said or did things to the parents you loved that shock you now, Where the Wild Things Are will be both a moving and startling experience. I could talk about the achievement of its design and its special effects, because it is an expensive Hollywood spectacle and that is what some people will pay to see. But what is far more crucial to express is how boldly, and triumphantly, it goes to a place other movies will not explore.