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Beauty, both emotional and artistic, is what makes Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are a truly amazing piece of art. With an incredible attention to detail, and sensitivity for the things that children go through, this is definitely one of the year’s best films.
To say that the film can show you emotions that most haven’t seen since the age of nine is an understatement, because it makes you feel nine again. You watch the movie with an altered sense of existence, you aren’t just an audience member anymore you begin to feel every emotion that the films main character, Max (Max Records), displays; for when you are happy – glee fills up your insides and you can’t help but smile. When you’re scared you want something to cling on to because you can’t do this on your own.
Before I faun too much, I should back track a little. Where the Wild Things Are, originally a book published in 1963, by Maurice Sendak, wrote the children’s tale, with colorful illustrations and whopping 10 lines of dialogue. A film adaptation of the book has been in the works since the early 1980’s, originally by Disney, but that never took off. It was not until 2001 was there any rumblings of a new film, when Universal Studios acquired the rights to it. It seemed evident that a film would be made, because Sendak gave the go ahead to make a movie with Spike Jonze attached to direct.
This did not pan out. Universal was not favoring the direction that Jonze had it set in, with a darker, more adult take on the children’s classic. Though Universal had already taken the liberty of attaching a teaser trailer to How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the production rights had been transferred over to Warner Bros. In 2006 production started, with a 110-page script written by Dave Eggers; a Jim Henson Creature shop contract to create the Wild Things, and Jonze yet again set to direct.
Right off the bat the audience is introduced Max, played by the fantastic Records, a nine year old with an imagination that allows him to make a fortress out of an igloo or an entire island full of beasts and landscapes, ranging from a massive desert to a dense forest; suitable for only the wildest of beings. An imagination that allows him to create a world that lets the audience see what he is feeling, in a way that hasn’t been done to a child so that the adult feels the emotion more then a child would. Though that sounds odd, it is that kind of movie – one that doesn’t go for the obvious, but the one that will transcend age to make you feel emotion through its imagery.
The imagery isn’t just in the imaginative power; it’s in the director’s ability to show the audience that Max isn’t the happiest of children. It is evident from a globe that sits in Max’s room that his father has not played a big part of his life. The way his sister ignores his cries when something very near and dear to him is torn down before his eyes. The tantrum he throws when he cannot accept his mother’s interest in another person. All these things are important in establishing who Max is, and Max is very much a child, one this movie teaches you to understand, and relate to.
The wild things are something to be experienced, as well they should be. With the combination of the full body suits and computer generated facial animations, they are very realistic and in some instances absolutely terrifying.
They’re not monsters, but they are not tame creatures either. They are the wild things after all, formed from Max’s imagination to help him escape what he deems a world unfit for him, and bestowing himself King of the Wild Things, all the while seeing the remnants of the previous regime in the form of bones in a fire.
The Wild Things are not just things that Max randomly created, for the sake of creating, but they are Max in a sense, or rather, the emotions that he feels and has them manifest in the forms of these beasts. They are what Max sees them as, ferocious and mysterious beings that he needs to get close to. It is from these acquaintances that Max learns about what these emotions actually mean to him, and that life is hard.
My ambiguity with regards to the beasts directly correlates to the way that I experienced the film, and yes I meant that, I did not watch it, I experienced it. The beasts were, by the film’s end at least, beings that directly affected me in some way shape or form. Such as actual terror when one of the characters throws a tantrum and rips another’s arm off. The movie transcends its need to appeal to the younger audience because they, frankly, will not enjoy this as much as someone who has grown to an age where they can appreciate the precious nature of childhood.
Concepts like these make it something more then just an adaptation, but a ferocious and amazing beast of its own.
Grade: A+
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