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| Friday, October 16, 2009 12:11 AM |
| On the Viewer - Where the Wild Things Are |
 by Fëanor |
Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are (an adaptation, of course, of Maurice Sendak's excellent children's book) opens with a handful of extremely realistic scenes with simple, minimal dialog which quickly and subtly give us a strong picture of our main character, a young boy named Max (Max Records). His sister, Claire (Pepita Emmerichs), is growing up and growing apart from him. His single mother (Catherine Keener), meanwhile, is busy with work and with romance and, though she clearly loves Max, she has little time for him. He feels left out - left behind. He tells his mother a story about a vampire who loses all his teeth - not his baby teeth, but his adult teeth - and thus can no longer be a vampire. It's not hard to see what the story means to him. At school he learns that even the Sun and the Earth will some day die. He is a child who sees the freedom and carefree happiness of childhood slipping away from him. When his frustration with this development comes to a head one night, he runs away from home. He comes upon a little sailboat which he jumps inside, and which swiftly takes him away to the island of the Wild Things.
But interestingly enough, being among the Wild Things isn't the fun escape you might expect. After all, these are Wild Things - huge, monstrous beasts. There's the sense, from the first time Max meets them right up to the moment he leaves them for the last time, that these creatures might at any moment turn on him and eat him. I like that constant sense of unease and danger, even - or perhaps especially - when Max is with the Wild Thing that he identifies with the most: a horned monster named Carol (James Gandolfini). When Max first meets the Wild Things, Carol is raging, destroying their houses, because he feels his family is coming apart and his friend KW (Lauren Ambrose) is drifting away from him. Max immediately senses a kindred spirit, and Carol senses something similar (smells it, even). The others aren't so welcoming, however, and Max must use his imagination and his quick mind to talk himself out of getting eaten. Carol is desperate to find someone to hold his family together, to keep them all happy. Latching onto one of the stories Max tells, he decides that Max can be this person - that Max can be their King. Max agrees, and the Wild Rumpus starts.
But that doesn't mean all their troubles are over. The Wild Things are a family just like Max's family, and they have similar problems. Only now Max - not his mother - is the one in a position of responsibility, and Carol is the frustrated, childish creature that he can't control.
Visually, as in all other ways, the film is beautiful, with haunting forests, eerie deserts, and wonderful monsters, all expertly photographed. Even Max's simple igloo in the real-world part of the film is a lovely creation. One of the most wondrous and breath-taking creations in the film, however, is Carol's carefully crafted model of a perfect city, where only the things you want to happen will happen. Max decides they will make this place a reality, and the Wild Things fashion a huge fort that is indeed nearly as fantastic as the model.
The soundtrack is perfect - a collection of great indie music by Karen O and the Kids that's quiet when it needs to be quiet, and wild and roaring when it needs to be wild and roar. The dialog is deceptively simple - the words are those of a child, but carefully crafted, with key phrases repeated, in order to create powerful metaphors and subtly carry across the film's themes. The acting is just as subtle, sparing, and excellent.
Where the Wild Things Are starts out as a story about the death of childhood and turns into a story about the birth of manhood. It's funny and wondrous and achingly sad and scary and touching and bittersweet and just exactly right. |
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