Remiel

Where The Wild Things Are (Movie Review)

Children live high stakes lives. Left on their own, they die. Parents provide not just guidance, but the sustained daily illusion that simply being and playing is enough. All will be well. And maybe that’s true. Maybe that’s why we like it when movies remind us what life looked like through child eyes. Where The Wild Things Are is acutely aware of this longing and – alarmingly – treats it like the vulnerability it is. This movie is for grownups.

My parents divorced when I was roughly Max’s (the protagonist) age. The ensuing custody battle was long, bitter, and transformational. Suddenly my parents were normal people capable of spite and weakness. The “magic bubble” burst, and instead of quietly playing LEGO all day, Kid Remiel was now screaming horrible things at his despairing, lonely mother. He dreaded coming home from school with an intensity he’d previously not known a heart could muster, and cartoony-seeming words like “hate” and “rage” took on the muscular realness better left on a shelf until adulthood.

Where The Wild Things Are will take you to your own version of that place. There was a time when a petty thing like not being allowed to stay up late felt like the worst fate imaginable. And there was another time when the grownups’ world cracked open around you, and you had to come to grips with their pain and fear, even if only occasionally, when the bubble was at its thinnest.

Spoiler note: This is not a movie that can really be “spoiled”. The story arc is too basic. If anything, it’s a film that will only get better on subsequent viewings. That said, this review does discuss the ending of the film.

The prologue to Where The Wild Things Are is an emotional train wreck: a string of harrowing events that occur in minutes, feel like hours, and linger in memory for the rest of the movie. No one is killed or traumatized; nothing happens that would make the evening news. We simply see Max’s protective bubble in the process of bursting. He “acts out” just a bit harder and louder than the other moms at your book club would tell you is normal. He trashes his sister’s room, and he (literally) bites his mom on the shoulder, hard. She demands to know “What’s WRONG with you?” From the look on his face, she may as well have bitten him back.

And then: the land of the Wild Things. Filmed novel adaptations usually condense the narrative for the sake of time. But in this case, Maurice Sendak’s original 1969 children’s book is a mere 339 words long (I just counted). Instead of deciding what to throw out, the writers had to grow a small story with big ideas into a feature length film that honors those ideas. The movie brings Sendak’s monstrous cast to horned, hairy life with what looked to me like a combination of grownups wearing “big muppet” suits, and CGI for their facial expressions and “wild rumpusing”.

This gives Max Records (the improbably named child star who plays Max) a tangible ensemble of beasts to interact with. It’s hard to imagine a green screen approach working nearly as well. But I don’t want to sell the actor short. Records’ performance is not just “good for a child actor”. It’s masterful, mature work. Oscar-worthy. He is just what we are told he is: an angry, confused child lost in a fantastic and dangerous wilderness. Even when his face dominates the frame – as he responds to offscreen events – he is completely real. For nearly the entire movie, his is the only human face we see, and there is not one inauthentic moment.

The film expands on the book by developing each of the Wild Things into a distinct character, and by pitting their frailties against each other so as to make Max’s involvement the key to everything. It works – organically – because the monsters collectively represent Max’s psyche, splintered and refracted so each embodies a particular characteristic. Two of the Wild Things are more important than the others: Carol and KW. The film’s various symbols are not intended to be a neat and tidy paint-by-numbers game, but it’s fair to say that Carol (a male monster voiced by James Gandolfini) mostly represents the “here and now” Max (angry, confused, at war with Mom), and KW (Lauren Ambrose) is, of course, Mom herself.

After cajoling the Wild Things first into not eating him, and next into making him their king, Max sets them to work building what looks like a large, wooden Death Star. Between construction sessions they play games, sleep in an intimate sort of “monster-pile” formation, laugh, fight, and gradually come to see Max for what he is: a kid in his pajamas. For his part, Max plays the parent for his monsters long enough to see himself in each of them, and finally decides it’s time to head home on his sailboat and take responsibility for what he’s done.

It’s the intensity of the fantasy scenes that keeps things firmly in the world of adults. These monsters are dangerous. Max’s “fantasy adventure” is on par with a child’s sprint down a busy highway. He could really get hurt. Though Max befriends his monster companions, the sense of peril never diminishes. In the end, the Wild Things may finally tear off his head and eat him anyway, not because they are “wild”, but because they are pissed off and losing control.

The film is bound to be a challenge for parents. For one thing, it is scary and upsetting. Perhaps worse, it suggests strongly that Max’s reconciliation with his mom is mostly on his own shoulders, at least for now. It’s unclear whether Max’s father is dead or divorced, and for how long he’s been gone. What’s certain is that while Max’s mom is a “good” one, he nevertheless feels unappreciated by her and by his sister, and extremely threatened by Mom’s boyfriend. Meanwhile, Mom is divided three ways: working full time, being a mother, and trying to rekindle her love life. It’s messy, it sucks, and it’s no one’s “fault”.

Fantasy it may be, but this movie is real. I can’t think of a book that has been more effectively adapted for the screen. Wild Things the book and Wild Things the movie feel like companion pieces that absolutely depend on each other. Watching the film helped me appreciate the book even more, and re-reading the book now makes me want to head back to the IMAX again tomorrow.