Where The Wild Things Are

While I've got nothing against professional film critics, and read a critics review because I'm interested in what they have to say, there are four major categories in which I don't take anyone's word for in regards to a film's quality and/or message: action blockbusters (particularly comic and sci-fi related), Oscar bait or anything released during Oscar sweeps season, foreign films, and children's films. Children's films are tricky territory for critics, probably because they are not made for the people reviewing them, and in that same sphere their suitability for children is also necessarily judged. And suitability seems to have been the main point of contention regarding director Spike Jonze's brilliant adaptation of one of the few books it seems everyone you know has both read and loved: Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are.

That Jonze's film is brilliant doesn't seem to have been in contention amongst critics. Beautifully written, directed, acted, designed, and photographed, Where the Wild Things Are expands on its brief but loaded source material in all the right ways. In this version of the story, young Max's journey doesn't begin with a punishment for acting his age, but a panicked flight from a confusing home situation made that way by his father's absence. It is this absence and its impact on both Max and his mother that set the framework for this picture. Miserable, confused, and hurting, he throws a spectacularly well- (or ill-) timed tantrum that gets out of hand, culminating with biting his mom and running away into the woods, and so his mystical journey begins.

And what a journey it is. The most striking thing about the land of the Wild Things is that it's not striking. It's a very familiar, plain deciduous forest, albeit one bordered by desert on one side and ocean on the other. The forests inhabitants, physical appearance aside, aren't especially fantastical either. Most of the Wild Things are easily identifiable as the different aspects of Max's being, and the rest are familiar in less obvious ways. In this way, the film allows Max to explore his feelings and question his actions after the Things crown his their king and he spends the length of his reign being caught in the middle of their conflicts. Carol is the most obvious part of Max, angry and confused by a sudden and unexplained abandonment, and it is mostly through arguments over Carol's behaviour that Max learns about his own. Max's journey to the land of the Wild Things is psychological in nature, and I would wager that its raw honesty is at the heart of what so many critics and filmgoers have claimed makes this film unsuitable for children - a claim I strongly dispute. There is much in this film to make both adult and child uncomfortable, but discomfort and unsuitability are two very different conditions, and the former is not always without its benefits.

Some critics have taken exception with the film's dark depiction of an unstable, unreliable world; others, with its violence. I would address the latter complaint first. Usually, when people complain about violence in kids films, it is because the violence is over-the-top or cartoonish, that is to say sanitized, the reality of its impacts hidden and denied. In the case of Where the Wild Things Are, it's kind of ironic that the majority of complaint's I've come across stem from the impacts of violence being portrayed in an honest and realistic fashion. The Wild Things are much bigger and stronger than Max, and so even their innocent play is fraught with peril as they cavort around jumping on each other and knocking over trees with childish exuberance. The risk of Max being involuntarily harmed is always present and palpable, largely thanks to an excellent performance by twelve-year old Max Records, and the risk of voluntary harm is always in play as well, as it is quickly established that the Wild Things have very short fuses. Also, there's the fact that they crown Max with a circlet and scepter taken from the corpse of a former king they clearly ate after they grew displeased with him, and verbal threats regarding Max becoming someone's meal are made more than once. The involuntary violence - that is, Max being hurt while playing - is not something I can find a reason for being alarmed by, as kids face it every day in the schoolyard, and it is in many ways a normal part of childhood. As my husband pointed out, Where the Wild Things Are is more honest about play than any other kid's film we've seen, because in this one - as in real life - play and games always break down after a point, resulting in at least one kid leaving hurt or unhappy. As for the threat of voluntary violence, I'd say it ties into the film's deeper theme, with is the second point of contention for many critics: the instability and unreliability of Max's world. Early in the film, Max's teacher gets a little too in-depth explaining to the class how the sun will eventually die, but not to worry, because humanity will probably have eradicated itself through any number of apocalyptic scenarios long before that happens (that uncomfortably hilarious scene brought Invader Zim''s Miss Bitters ("doom...dooom....dooooomed!"). Carols mournful monologues include a reflection on how all the sand in the desert used to be something, and what it might erode into next; and, of course, the eventual discovery that Max isn't a real king with mystical powers destroys any fairtytale qualities remaining in the Wild Things existence.

I think it is this portrayal and exploration of instability that makes Where the Wild Things Are one of, possibly the best kid's film I've ever seen, and the very reason kids should be taken to see it. It is unflinching, but not unbearably so, because it is honest. The reason for Max's recent loss of his father is never spoken of in the film, allowing it to be read as being about either divorce or death, and in this way its talk of the sun's extinction is a perfect metaphor. What should be more gratuitously reliable than the sun rising, setting, and being there every day? What should be more gratuitously reliable to a child than the continued, whole existence of his family? More than any other film I've seen on the topic, Where the Wild Things Are explores what happens when the most reliable thing in a kids world is swept out from under his feet with a breadth and depth unmatched even by Brad Bird's The Iron Giant - and I would argue that it does this in a way that a child sufficiently old enough would understand and identify with. Unfortunately, I don't have a child to query on this topic, so this is all conjecture based on what I read and watched as a kid and the fact that I come from what sociologists call a broken home, but I can say this: it's no E.T. E.T. is the most famous, well-loved kid's film about broken homes of my generation, and I hate it. I think it's horribly dishonest, as it glosses over the ugliness of divorce and its impacts with both the confusingly incomplete metaphor of its titular character and the fact that, aside from being less lonely for a few weeks, Elliot never works anything out emotionally, and the only angry or irrational behaviour he exhibits can be blamed on E.T. accidentally getting drunk and passing it on psychically. There is, of course, a tidy, convenient, happy-sappy ending to the story. People love this movie, I mean truly, deeply love it - a Rotten Tomatoes poll several years back ranked it as the best sci-fi film of all time. To quote my favourite virtual philosopher, Homestar Runner: What. The. Crap. E.T. is escapism, but not the good kind. I hated it when I watched it as a child of divorce, and I hated it when I watched it as an adult child of divorce.

Where The Wild Things Are, on the other hand, lays its cards on the table. It's a story about reality, and what our options are when the prospects of a fairytale ending or mysterious stranger who will make everything okay are dim or impossible. I don't know about you, but I don't know a lot of adults who speak fondly of blatantly fictional stories about uncomfortable realities. Sure, we like our biopics, and "based on true events" stuff, but it's telling that the best, most complete, most honest film I've ever found about the destructive nature of guilt and unconfessed sin is an English-language picture written and directed by Americans...which was produced and filmed in Spain, because they could not get financial backing in their home country, and whose only U.S. distributor was Paramount Home Video. In the circles I most frequently travel in, El Maquinista (The Machinist) is often dismissed out of hand because of its R rating, a rating which seems to accompany films about truth almost as much as it does films about obscene and gratuitous lies. Where The Wild Things Are, by virtue of its source material, is already more famous than The Machinist will ever be, even in the face of a new public interest in star Christian Bale (The Dark Knight) - but I wonder how the response to this movie would change were it an original or little-known story. I'd love to read a review by someone who's never heard of the book.

Spike Jonze is a man with a very strange resume consisting mostly of music videos for the like of Bjork, The Chemical Brothers, and R.E.M., as well as writing credits for Jackass, Jackass: The Movie, and Jackass 2, but until now has been most well-known for a bizarre little film called Being John Malkovich, a picture I'm not sure I like but will always appreciate. Whether or not you take your kid to see it, Where The Wild Things Are is a work of art that accomplishes everything good artwork should.