Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are" (aka, "The Decline and Fall of the Wild Thing Empire") is not Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are." It's only fair you should know that in advance. The book's illustrations and nine sentences have been turned into a surprisingly (some might even say shockingly) literal-minded 90-minute motion picture about the misery of being a kid. Jonze and co-scenarist Dave Eggers are clearly in touch with their inner-miserable child; they seem to vividly remember all the daily turmoil that childhood is heir to -- the tantrums, fights, scrapes, bruises, fears, anxieties, insults, hurt feelings, bossiness, cruelty, rejection, confusion, heckling, bullying, bragging, pouting, moping, testing, haggling, crying, rage...
Those aspects of childhood trauma are acutely and accurately portrayed in the movie. Every time the fun starts, somebody goes too far (like a puppy who hasn't learned his soft mouth yet), and someone gets hurt or scared or angry or sad or all of those things. The movie's adulterated sensibility is that of an alienated grown-up looking back at the (somewhat romanticized, over-intellectualized) misery of childhood and denying or downplaying the equally real fun stuff -- the in-the-moment joy, the exhilaration of being and imagining and doing and playing. So, in some sense it's a corrective to all those stupid "Isn't it wonderful being a kid?" movies that remember childhood through equally distorted rose-tinted lenses.
Parents who spend all day dealing with their kids' bickering and fleeting, unpredictable emotional outbursts will immediately recognize the verisimilitude of Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are," but you can't really blame them if they don't want to sit through it. Again. Or take their younger kids, who won't necessarily be frightened but will likely wonder why everybody is so morose. Especially the Wild Things, who aren't so much wild as the very opposite: neurotic, overgrown, overanalytical, dysfunctionally domesticated. They don't need a fake boy king, they cry out for group therapy.
That's the source of my ambivalence about the movie as a whole: It's so transparently a narcissistic adult's diagnostic reinterpretation of childhood ("Will you keep out all the sadness?"). Tempestuous feelings don't just pass over and through these kids (I'm including the Wild Things as big kids -- more in a moment), as they do with most children of Max's age (that is, of the age when they still wear soiled hooded terrycloth animal peejays). Torments aren't soon forgotten, abandoned for more pleasurable activities; they hang around all day like wet blankets, wrung out, mulled over, discussed, overanalyzed, brooded upon. There's a preciousness to the film that treats commonplace childhood agonies (and they are agonizing in the moment) as something "special." One of these days, the movie seems to say to itself, you'll look back on your childhood and remember the torture you went through on your way to becoming... an artist! (A filmmaker, that is. And a writer.)¹
The problem is not that it's so "dark" or "adult," just that it's emotionally monochromatic, leaving out almost everything else. Most kids can handle more real-world "darkness" than adults are comfortable with. Your kids may not have any problem instinctively understanding that this movie is about the rotten stuff in their everyday lives. They may, however, regret that seeing it left them feeling so bummed afterwards. But then they'll move on to something else.
Maybe you remember the Sendak book. The mischievous boy Max gets rambunctious, out of hand, yells "I'll eat you up!" at his mom, who sends him to his room without supper. He sails off to where the Wild Things are, and proclaims himself their king, proving his worthiness by staring them down. They go on wild rumpuses, and Max sends them to their rooms without supper. Then Max gets hungry and lonely and decides to give up his royal position to return home, where someone loves him best of all. The Wild Things cry, saying they love him so much they could eat him up. When he gets home, his supper is still hot.
In the movie, Max (Max Records) is not punished by an adult for any of his wild behavior. His mom is one of those wishy-washy, boundary-less parents who encourages him to tell her stories and probably thinks of him as her best friend. He plays with her feet when she's trying to work, and she seems to think it's cute. His absent dad (no explanation) has left him with a globe bearing a "Scarface"-like inscription, telling Max the world is his. His older sister doesn't pay enough attention to him, and his mom (that's the great Catherine Keener) has a date (Mark Ruffalo) over for dinner one night. Max gets jealous when mom won't come up to see the fort/spaceship he's built in his room. He doesn't just ferociously growl, "I'll eat you up!" -- he actually bites her on the shoulder. He doesn't get sent to his room, he runs away (filmed so that you expect him to get hit by passing traffic). When he gets home, there are no repercussions. His soup is still hot. He doesn't fall asleep first, his mom does.
That's a really different story, but obviously Jonze and Eggers had to do something to stretch nine sentences into 90 minutes. The book (in modern child-rearing language) was about Max using his imagination during a time out, working through some boundary issues and struggling to pull himself together after he's allowed himself get too far out of control. The movie is about Max doing whatever he wants, including biting his mom, and getting away with it unscolded. It's all OK, Max, whatever. There are no rules or limits on your behavior. Nobody cares what you do. (In a few months, this Max will start torturing small animals as a cry for help...)
Ah, but the Wild Things -- the physical fact of them as realized on the screen -- are so wonderful and amazing that I wondered if the filmmakers just figured they didn't need much of anything else to justify their movie. They're almost right, too, except that these incredible beasties behave like they're clinically depressed so much of the time that even they become a drag to hang out with after a while. Everybody's so listless, and so sensitive.
As living creatures, however, they're fantastic to behold. You can tell that they are biologically related to little kids and big dogs who rarely bathe. From their matted fur, runny noses and goopy eyeballs down to their canine foot pads and claws, they are so meat-and-hair real you can almost smell them. (There's a real physical intimacy to the, too: When one of them hides Max in her mouth, he finds himself in a womb-like sac that appears to be made out of slimy '70s shag carpeting, and he's not the slightest bit grossed out.) It's as if somebody took the latex foam creations of H.R. Pufnstuf, made them flesh and bone, and then threw dirt clods at them. The Wild Things live outside (or in "houses" that are really spherical forts made out of sticks) and sleep in the comforting (but nearly asphyxiating) safety of piles. Nearly everything they do has some direct correlative in Max's home life, including the messy sleeping pile that almost crushes him the way his front lawn igloo did when his sister's friends jumped on it and smashed it during a snowball fight when he was taking refuge inside.
In the movie, unlike the book, the Wild Things have individual names and personalities. Max's best bud (the one most like him) is Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini -- an effortlessly masterful performance), who also has problems with his temper and his desire to bite. He lives with several others, including the kvetchy Judith (Catherine O'Hara -- genius, as always) and somnambulant Ira (Forrest Whitaker), Carol's birdlike best-friend/appendage Douglas (Chris Cooper), the introverted goat-like Alexander (Paul Dano), and KW (Lauren Ambrose), who's been taking off on her own a lot recently (just like Max's sister) to hang out with a pair of owlish creatures named Bob and Terry (after former longtime Warner Bros. heads Bob Daly and Terry Semel) she thinks are a lot cooler and more interesting than her own clan.
I can't say enough about what splendid creations these Wild Things are, in appearance and vocal characterization. The few moments when the movie approaches unfettered joy are when it allows them to let loose and rumble with Max: the beginning of a dirt-clod fight (even after the hurt feelings of choosing up sides, but before the wounded pride and physical abrasions that come from actual dirt clods), or tumbling down a sand dune, head over heels. The problem is, the Things are not Wild at all. They present no danger to Max, and when they say they might eat him up (as a threat or a term of endearment), we don't believe it for a millisecond. They offer therapy without risk.
So, although I found much to admire and appreciate in "Where the Wild Things Are," I was also perplexed at what a downer the movie is. (The anemic Karen O. indie™ songs don't help.) It makes sense, I guess, that a skateboarder and "Jackass" producer would direct a film that gets such a kick out of down-and-dirty physical reality. But how did he manage to leave out the fun?
* * * *
¹ As I said in reply to a comment below: The movie practically wears a bumpersticker that says: "I'm Proud of My Extra-Sensitive Child." It privileges Max's pain -- as if every kid doesn't go through it one way or another.
"Where the Wild Things Are" is without a doubt my favorite movie I've seen this year (although I still haven't seen "A Serious Man," but I'd be pleasantly shocked if it had the same affect on me as WTWTA). And yet, I generally agree with your interpretation of the movie at the same time -- but it's sort of one of those situations where I mostly agree with your reading, but strongly disagree with your conclusion that it makes for a bummer of a movie. Bittersweet, yes, but not a bummer.
You write, "Tempestuous feelings don't just pass over and through these kids...as they do with most children of Max's age (that is, of the age when they still wear soiled hooded terrycloth animal peejays). Torments aren't soon forgotten, abandoned for more pleasurable activities..."
But that's where my reading of the movie differs: It's a film about exactly that. About the specific point in a child's life, right around Max's age, when he starts to realize it's getting harder and harder to shrug off torments by simply bounding off toward the next pleasurable activity. And what I found especially affecting (and brilliant) is that it's a film not just about Max's guilt, not just about his loneliness, his realization that bad things exist in the world, that he's capable of doing bad things too -- but ultimately about the fact that that's okay.
Yes, sometimes life sucks, a truism every kid learns eventually. But that doesn't mean it's going to suck all the time, and that there aren't great joys to experience in between the bad parts, or that even the simple things that brought you joy as a kid need to be abandoned just because now you know the sun is going to die. There may be a lot of "mopey" introspection during the film, but it ends with a kid who's a little wiser about the lousy parts of life and still manages to run home in boisterous laughter, howling at the neighbor's dog. I find that incredibly uplifting.
(And in a lot of ways, the existence of the movie itself is an affirmation of its point: A film made by oddball grown-ups ruminating on the sometimes despairing nature of life, but still in touch enough with their goofy imaginations to make a movie this fantastically surreal.)
I also disagree that the film fails to capture the "in-the-moment joy, the exhilaration of being and imagining and doing and playing." The movie, at least on a plot level, was all about playing. That's one of the things I appreciate about it so much -- that Jonze somehow managed to make a feature length film about a little kid having fun. (Max plays with his dog, then makes an igloo, then can't touch the lava, then runs in a forest, then builds a super-cool giant fort with a watchtower and tunnel and secret compartment...)
And on top of all that, on a purely craft level, the movie is gorgeous. Gorgeously composed, gorgeously edited (the frantic opening, probably only about 20 seconds long and ending in a perfect freeze-frame for the title, is immediately among my all-time favorites), and gorgeously surreal ("Where the hell did that raccoon come from?!" -- one of the film's many perfect, small, wildly unpredictable moments). And, as you write, the Wild Things themselves were a joy to simply behold.
And also, any move ostensibly designed for kids where one character rips off another character's arm and beats him with it frickin' rules. (Another of those small, perfect, wildly unpredictable moments.)
So, yeah. I love this movie. To quote Lisa Schwarzbaum's review paraphrasing K.W., I could it eat it up, I love it so.
JE: That's a really compelling reading of, and argument for, the film, Kris. Perhaps it's the difference between a Max who is about five or six (as he appears to be in the book) and the nine-year-old of the movie. Max does find himself in an "adult" role with the Wild Things, and learns how hard it is to manage a "family." I think the movie was trying to do something with that, but didn't quite bring it home. If anything, one of his problems is that his mom relies on him to be more grown up than he is.
Hrm, not sure I agree entirely with your reading of the film. That it's a different monster than Sendak's is certainly true, but I don't see Jonze's Max as just 'getting away with' whatever he wants. He doesn't get the punishment he gets in the book, but he's forced through the same process of role-switching: by becoming a surrogate parent to the Wild Things, he's forced into a position of sympathy with his own mother, whether by recognition of his own hellish behavior or simply by having to mollify it in others. That's the genius of the final scenes with Keener, too, when Eggers/Jonze trust Max's growth enough not to ruin the moment with dialogue.
I'd also argue that they have a really sophisticated take on the relationship between play and violence, and in a way that isn't nearly as clinical as I was afraid it might be. Violence can be dangerous and hurtful, but it can also be creative and exhilarating. What I loved about scenes like the dirt-clod fight is that the danger is inherent from the moment the first rock is thrown (if one of those things hits Max, he's a goner), and part of the exhilaration comes from that feeling of danger. Compare this to the more analytic mode of film narrative, where we'd likely get two separate and contrasting scenes, one positive, one negative. That's the thesis process of a movie like Crash, which has to separate out each individual point into a self-contained episode (and lose all verisimilitude in the process.) In Jonze's movie, the contradictions aren't separated out, but inherently bound to each other. I loved that, and for me it felt much closer to my own memories of childhood. Maybe that makes me a biased observer, heh.
One thing I was curious to see if you'd mention: the shaky-cam. I know you recently posted a blog suggesting that filmmakers learn how to hold a camera steady first, but I have to say that Jonze knows how to use a shaky-cam effectively. He's got a great eye for composition (which is what most shaky-cam films seem to neglect), and the added looseness of the frame seems to lend it an extra layer of intimacy. Or again, maybe that's just me.
JE: I mentioned the dirt-clod fight, too, as one of the few exhilarating moments in the movie -- all-too-briefly, between the awkwardness of choosing up sides ("good guys" vs. "bad guys"!) and Alexander getting hurt by a clod and wanting to quit. I have to say I barely even noticed the shaky-cam after the opening sequence with the dog. I didn't feel it was used obtrusively or inappropriately. For me, it worked.
Can the inevitable feature-length movie version of "The Giving Tree" be far off?
Jim: My daughter was totally freaked out by it, so much so that it required a half-hour of sitting with her while she cried and complained about how some kids are mean to her at school. It clearly gets under the skin of childhood, and taps into some universal feelings. I think it's a film that raises a conversation, and that may be its key strength. You clearly think it doesn't emphasize enough fun aspects of the book and of childhood; Jonze and Eggers clearly see a darker strain of childhood that tends to obliterate a lot of the fun. Is that the way kids see it or the way adults in retrospect view their childhood after they've learned to mope about it for years instead of moving forward? Who knows, but I see a lot of people's emotional damage that can be traced to their childhoods. I don't think Jonze/Eggers' view of the book is an intellectually invalid one. Having said that, I definitely don't want to revisit the movie, which may be its chief weakness. It has no light to balance out the dark, as all the classic and enduring children's tales do. But, then, this is not a kids' movie: It's a therapy movie. In fact, you could have added a prologue of a grown man lying on a shrink's couch and remembering all this, and it would have made perfect sense. (Then, again, don't all the best therapy movies have at least some bitter, hard-earned laughs?)
JE: That's exactly the way it strikes me -- as "a therapy movie." I don't think it's too "dark" -- because the miserable stuff is quite accurately portrayed. It's the balance that's missing, the ability to switch tones, to live in the moment. There's an elegiac tone to the scene where they howl at the sun while standing on the cliff (maybe because Max is fearful that the sun will die and not come up tomorrow?). That reminds me: I thought the stuff about the dying sun was funny at first, but that's one part of the film I thought was a little dishonest. First, the teacher never says the obvious thing, that this won't happen in our lifetimes, but many, many years from not. The death of the sun in the distant future is an abstract concept. The expanding universe that troubles Alvy Singer in "Annie Hall," was a joke about young Alvy's neuroses. Here I think we're supposed to take it seriously that Max is worried about the sun dying -- when he has so many more immediate and concrete things to worry about (like your daughter's encounters with meanness from other kids at school).
I enjoyed this film much more than most. My replies:
"...about the misery of being a kid."
I don't know if 'misery' is the way I would look at it. I don't know if Max experiences much misery (to be too semantic - "wretched unhappiness"). From what I observed, he seems more confused and lonely than miserable. There is a difference between depression and sadness, and WTWTA leans much heavier on the latter.
"somewhat romanticized, over-intellectualized..."
It could be argued that 90% of films ever made are guilty of at least one of these two crimes towards their subjects, dontcha think? "Over-intellectualized"? The Wild Things don't sit around reading Psychology of the Unconscious. Much of this has been applied by critics, I think, because the free-form nature of the plot doesn't give them enough to pad their reviews.
"It's so transparently an adult's diagnostic reinterpretation of childhood."
Perhaps. I don't know what difference you are drawing between an interpretation and a reinterpretation (do you know what Jonze thought about childhood before he started making the movie?), but I'm splitting some hairs. He is certainly accepting that, as an adult, he must make some assumptions about childhood that he cannot know for sure, but the opposite, an adult thinking too confidently that they know how kids are - "you Wild Thingz are totally rad, dude!"- is much more common and irritating.
"...the torture you went through on your way to becoming... an artist!"
Torture? Really? Max is treated with indifference by the people he loves, but he is not abused, or put through some sort of hellish nightmare. He suffers as much as any normal kid does. The filmmakers also are not really concluding that Max will grow up to be a great artist; he has a kid-like imagination, amplified by the fact that we're watching a *movie*, and tells stories to his mother, but what kid doesn't?
"Left them feeling so bummed afterwards."
Why? Max returns home to a loving mother. He has learned, even unconsciously, that one can't live inside their own head, and eventually your fantasies will have to give way to reality, cruel or not. He also clearly accepts what his mother has to go through when he gets out of control, and maybe she picks up on that as well. There is a moment of mutual understanding. That's not depressing. It's kind of inspiring.
"Max is not punished by an adult for any of his wild behavior."
Huh? The entire plot is set in motion because his mother tries to restrain his temperament and keep him from acting out in front of a guest. That is a universal and sensible boundary.
"When he gets home, there are no repercussions."
Obviously his mother has been worried about him for running away. We are not told how long he has been gone - it could have been 20 minutes or 5 hours ("his soup is still hot" - well, maybe she put it in the damn microwave). A parent who reacts to their child's abandonment of the home by making the home seem even colder and crueler is a very poor one indeed.
"It's all OK, Max, whatever. There are no rules or limits on your behavior. Nobody cares what you do. (In a few months, this Max will start torturing small animals as a cry for help...)"
Back up a bit. Remember that we see Max biting his mother, but there's no scene of her dressing the bloody, gaping wound in the bathroom, in pain. In all likelihood she was reacting to the *idea* of being bitten, even if it was not as physically intense as a 9-year-old could make it. Again, his mother can hardly be faulted for being too overjoyed at his return to punish him further.
"beasties behave like they're clinically depressed."
Not at all. If they behaved like they were clinically depressed, they would just sit around and not do anything. They do quite a bit, building an enormous fort, for one. Remember that they are extensions of Max, and are inspired by a particularly sad experience for him. What were you and other critics hoping for? Max to escape to the island of never-ending love and joy, only to eventually, reluctantly come home to the "inferior" real world?
To summarize, there are moments of wonderful happiness and beauty in this film. They are simply pitched against the confusion of childhood. "I'll eat you up, I love you so" is probably the most joyous piece of dialogue I've heard at the movies all year.
JE: Thanks for your detailed responses. I'll reply to clarify a few of the things I wrote:
"...about the misery of being a kid." -- Two things: Kids feel emotions intensely, but they don't last very long. (Of course, to a kid five minutes can seem like an eternity.) What I intended by that phrase was to suggest that the film is, as I said, "emotionally monochromatic." It emphasizes the misery over all else.
"over-intellectualized" -- Not the characters, the filmmakers. For the reasons I outlined, I feel the movie itself does this to the material rather than approaching it with a childlike sensibility. That's not necessarily good or bad, just a description of the contrast between the movie's approach and the book's approach.
"torture... artist!" -- Again, this is my reading of the filmmakers' attitude toward Max as a surrogate for themselves (Jonze, Eggers). Max is portrayed as a budding architect (igloo, bedroom fort/ship, Wild Thing compound), storyteller, dancer (though maybe that's not his forte). I used the word "torture" because I think the movie does accurately capture how acutely kids feel emotional pain.
"feeling so bummed afterwards" -- I base this on watching and listening to the kids in the audience with whom I saw the movie. You describe a perfectly sensible adult reaction, but I saw some bummed and confused kids. To them, this movie just wasn't like the book they knew and loved. I think that's what people mean when they say it's a movie about kids, but not necessarily for kids.
"Max is not punished by an adult" -- My point is that nobody's in charge in this household. It is a natural, healthy think for a kid to provoke an adult to find out where the limits are. That's something the book does effortlessly, without overanalyzing.
"no repercussions" -- You're right that it would be counterproductive to punish Max immediately upon returning home. (If I recall, the kitchen clock says it's about 11 p.m., so he's been gone for a few hours.) I was pointing out the contrast to the book, in which everything happens because Max's mom sends him to his room for behaving like a Wild Thing. I pointed out that his supper is still hot in both descriptions, because that's the last line of the book.
"It's all OK, Max, whatever." -- Again, this is my reading of the mom's passive attitude toward Max. (Talk about psychoanalyzing: I think Max is trying to get her attention; he wants to be punished because it would be a form of validation that shows she actually cares! That's part of the boundary-testing that all kids do.) The wound that results from a nine-year-old's bite isn't the question (it could be quite serious), but the physical violation of trying to bite somebody is pretty serious. He wasn't playing.
"Wild Things... clinically depressed" -- They engage in fits of activity, then long scenes of brooding and listlessness. They don't seem capable of acting on their own, but look to their "king" for energy, inspiration and direction. They just seem... depleted. Did you feel any of the Wild Things came to "love" Max, or vice-versa? I didn't. I felt like he left because he thought he'd just made a mess of everything where the Wild Things were and just may as well go back and face the mess he ran away from at home...
He plays with her feet when she's trying to work, and she seems to think it's cute.
I personally found this moment to be tender and truthful. I'm not sure if you have children, but allowing your child the opportunity to express intimacy is fundamental to their psychological well-being.
In the same scene, the mother is overwhelmed with her work, and heroically abandons it for a few moments so that her son can express his creative potential. This moment serves two purposes: it reveals the mother's inherent decency as a parent, and it supplies a crucial screenwriting arrow, the pay-off of which comes when Max must improvise his grandiose tales with The Wilds.
Also, the mother's lack of punishment is entirely appropriate. A child of divorce (or perhaps a deceased parent) requires a certain amount of understanding when it comes to rage. The final scence takes on a quiet note of dual transformation. But I do agree that the film could have used an injection or two of joy, at least for my daughter's sake.
I pretty much agree with everything you see in the movie. However, I saw the movie last night and, although I was interested and engaged throughout, I felt it to be a less than satisfying experience.
I wasn't put off by the emotional problems of the Wild Things as much as you were, even though their human qualities was a pleasant surprised. I simply thought the movie suffered from being based on a book with nine sentences in it. It's funny that in his review, Roger Ebert writes that he thought the movie was too long. I thought it was too short. Yes, it's a good thing that the movie did not feel stretched or prolonged, but to me, the whole movie seemed to suffer by its determination to quickly meet every story point from the original book. This problem is most clearly seen in the middle of the movie, at the moment when the Things stop thinking of Max as the king as start realizing that he is just normal...you know, like all the other Things. This happens soon after the dirt fight, and yet the dirt fight happens not long after Max meets the Wild Things. They play together, they make a fort, they have a dirt fight, and then all the Things realize that they don't have a king. Max learns about being a leader and then goes home.
As I'm writing this, I continue to struggle with my ambivalence about the film. Yes, my description of the film seems to support the fact that it is a short parable and a moral tale, which is what the book was. I guess, in the end, I hadn't felt involved enough in the world of the Things. Not that Spike Jonze doesn't know how to involve the viewer. I felt involved in the experience of Max's journey through the land of the Things, but Max, and the viewer, do not gain enough understanding of the land and the Things. Why are they so depressed all the time? Well, even if the Things tell us why, i still didn't FEEL it.
Yes, there are a lot of things to appreciate in the movie. Especially the opening sequence, which plunges the viewer into a chase between Max and his dog. I love the title card shot too, but if this sequence were to be looked at shot by shot, I think it would seem much less exciting. Overall, the movie just felt...inconsequential.
Man, after I saw the film I understood the reaction from some people who felt cheated by the ad campaign, but I thought for sure you would have been one of the people to love this film as much as I did (although I guess I should have seen this coming from our completely different reactions to Synecdoche NY, a film you seemed to think was also too much of a downer but I found just as hilarious as any of Kaufman's previous screenplays). While most of the negative reviews seem to focus on the sadness, I thought it did a great job of touching on all the mixed emotions of childhood. Sadness yes, but also the joy, the anger and the confusion. And I am someone who by no means had anything remotely close to an unhappy childhood. And while agree with your "adult's diagnostic reinterpretation of childhood" comment, I don't see how that's a bad thing (other than, as I said earlier, the film's promotion as a kid's movie).
But I'm most disappointed at your reaction to the lack of a clear moral ("The movie is about Max doing whatever he wants, including biting his mom, and getting away with it unscolded.") For a person who's constantly talking about the "don't tell, show" philosophy of moviemaking, I can't understand why you would require the movie to have some sort of "Now, you know you were a bad boy!" moment, when it's pretty clear that he has come to this realization all by himself. That's one of the many things I loved, the kid's an true a-hole, in the way that only a kid of that age can be, and by the end he knows it (shown perfectly in the beautiful scene where Max sees that Carol has smashed his model, clearly reflecting Max's destructive tantrum in his sister's room).
I really think that this is the most realistic depiction of being a child that age that I have ever seen. The scene where Max designs his dream fort (It'll have a detective agency... and robots who'll do the work for us... and when someone comes in we don't want their head will explode!) feels like it could have been written by a child, and it filled me with an indescribable, knowing delight. All I could think was, why don't more movies get it THIS right?
I'm glad we can agree on what a great, great decision the mixture of puppets and CGI was. If they don't sweep the technical Oscars, there is no justice in this world.
I wrote much the same sentiment on my blog a few days ago Jim. The Wild Things are truly a wonderous sight. It's some of the best FX work in a long time. Seamlessly integrated CGI and suit work, not to mention the tremendous voice performances.
I didn't interpret the parenting that way you did, I thought she was being caring in a way that encouraged Max's creativity. She wrote down his story as he was telling it to her, signaling to me that she planned to keep it and show him stories he used to tell her when he was older. My mom says she wished she had done that for me.
I thought the movie was more about Max learning the meaning of being home and how much he appreciated it despite his temporary unhappiness with his mother and sister. I do agree that the part where he actually bites her, then runs away is mishandled from both a writing and directing standpoint. Especially with what I got from the ending, that home is a safe place, and Max's mom could finally sleep knowing that Max is home safe. That would've made more impact if Max had not actually attacked her and run away, but just been sent to bed. The ending came off as more about the mom than about Max, which could play into your point about it being a grown-ups take on the story.
Thank you, Thank you for your commentary on this, Jim! The film seems to be getting ecstatically positive reviews, which made me think there was something wrong with me for not liking it.
The whole tone of the film was too angsty, neurotic and a bit off for me.
I do nod my head in agreement with your wonder at the amazing monsters. They are obviously the best part of the movie.
Amen bro.The film is intellectually dishonest. This is a dream or illusion. What kid would dream up monster friends this whiny? It's like Woody Allen's Annie Hall School sequence with the kids talking to him with adult dialogue. It is clearly a film guilty of the worst sort of critic pandering, an offense every bit as vulgar as Michael Bay's explosion porn. The bogus indie music seals it. I kept thinking that someone should shoot the singer as she/he sounded like it was really suffering. I'm sure Jonze tore a rotator cuff patting himself on the back but it is a hollow attempt at being "deep". Like the kid in your 10th grade class who wore black and kept telling you how "boring" everything is and how he "didn't care". Lame.
I'm ambivalent about the movie, too, but I think it's one big "repercussion" for Max, namely that he begins to identify with his mother's role in the social order by having to deal with all of his projected psychological beasties. The book is kind of a drag, too. Jonze and Eggers just extend many things which are only (symbolically) implied by Sendak (for instance, the book seems to be a child-like retelling of the primal scene in Freud's Wolf Man analysis, where his subject dreamed of white, fox-like wolves after witnessing his parents doing it doggie-style). Obviously, theirs isn't the only extension possible, but it feels pretty consistent with the book, not a "really different story." To me, they prove that the story doesn't much benefit from being made into a longer one, closing down some of a what is a perfectly open metaphor.
Excellent blog.
I will say that I appreciated the movie more than I enjoyed it, in keeping with many of your positive critiques. I took the moodiness and the importance of rage, loyalty, and fairness to point to an attempt to stay within the logical confines of a 9-year-old boy's world. I thought the characters lacked the ability to hash out their problems in a therapeutic adult way because Max himself lacked that mindset. Throwing dirt and seething tears are consistently the only ways of dealing with problems, and the movie doesn't permit deus ex machina to enter in the form of narrator or an adult character. It is uncompromising in its adherence to finding no solution outside itself.
The movie is a drag, I think, because the writers envision Max as a drag. Jonze and Eggers wrote a character who seems to sabotage his own heedless childhood fun at every turn. His limited approach to problem solving rings true to me in a 9-year-old way, but his encounter with problems in every single facet of his existence does not.
JE: Great observation. Yes, I think the filmmakers regard Max as a "special" kid. The movie practically wears a bumpersticker that says: "I'm Proud of My Extra-Sensitive Child."
I've been aware of the ads for this movie for some time, and that it's based on Sendak's book. Until I read your description of the book, and saw the picture you included in your post, I didn't believe I had ever read it. Now I seem to have dim memories...
But I've found it remarkable that none of the trailers have done anything to entice me into seeing this movie. There was somethng subtly off about them. Although they showed montages of brief scenes of quiet, warm moments between Max and a Wild Thing, or of them apparently having fun, there seemed something cheerless and unexciting about the trailers.
Are trailers created by advertising departments? Maybe they have no idea how to market this, and the dissonance leaked through.
Mr. Emerson, I believe you may have been viewing this film through a misguided lens. You lament at the lack of repercussions for our dear Max's wild behaviour yet I viewed the film as having the strongest of consequences for his actions. For on the surface his Mother is immediate in her happiness for Max's return, I thought it was quite evident that biting her on the shoulder and running away proved to be a very cathartic experience that irreparably altered their relationship. Although it is clear that Max has grown during his sojourn with the Wild Things, I do not think his Mother is so forgiving. She will never view him as the child he once was, but instead as someone independent who can intently commit both selfless and malicious actions. That the film handles these grace notes with subtleness is what renders it a rare exposition of childhood. Other criticisms have been directed towards the pacing and how the film becomes somewhat stagnant mid-stream, I believe this is done purposefully in order to allow proper reflection during the film; much similar to the experience of watching the Empire State Building for 485 minutes. It is noteworthy to detail that this film is not a populist view of childhood but in fact a very cogent look at a specific type of childhood. Perhaps one must have similarly cathartic experiences at an early age in order to relate?
JE: Very nicely put. Perhaps the movie is trying to show that Max comes to empathize better with his mom's position as head of the family. That, however, is one of the things that made me feel this was an adult's precious, romanticized view of the pains of his own "special" childhood, where the kid had to be the parent, too. (Yes, I know this happened to Dave Eggers when he was in his 20s, but that's because both his parents died within a few weeks of each other and he had to raise his younger brother -- but that's not the situation in the movie.)
"It's so transparently an adult's diagnostic reinterpretation of childhood."
This represents what I thought was the major failing of the film. We often hear it said about a great (ostensible) kids movie that "It doesn't feel like it was made for kids." Well, the unspoken part of that is that it doesn't feel like it was made for any specific group. It just feels like the filmmakers found a good story and told it. The Pixar movies often have this feel.
WILD THINGS, on the other hand, felt calculated to me. It felt like the filmmakers were actively seeking the "didn't feel like a kids movie" plaudit by pandering to the Gen-X crowd who would be taking their kids to it. I wrote in my review that it felt at times like I was watching REALITY BITES with Muppets.
I will add my voice to the general chorus singing the praises of those Muppets though. They were fantastic.
Jonze doesn't impress me. He has the benefit (or ability) of being cool enough to recognize a project's potential, not necessarily a completed film, but he isn't Michael Bay, who thinks like an accountant, or an ad-man, a rudimentary sense to sniff out properties that might make effective popcorn movies, good openers.
Jonze and Bay share fanboy sensibilities - these are definitely guys you'd see in a comic book shop, and they start off in the same way - music videos. The talent ends before the first roll of film is exposed, and it becomes by-the-numbers, but the skill of their collaborators is why their projects shine. This movie is Jonze without Kaufman, and this is where Jonze is headed in the second chapter of his career, trailing ludicrous nostalgia for items that evoke childhood memory.
I'm not much different, except I detest comic books and don't recognize every comic book published under the Sun to be a lucrative movie franchise, but I do go to Phillies games, wear my Phillies caps, and on occasion, collect baseball cards. I do it to lie to myself, to pretend I'm still a boy. It works sometimes, and then sometimes it doesn't. Childhood was never-ending nightmare, something I'd care not to relive, except maybe those (very few) moments of unusual happiness, mostly revolving around the Phillies - when they took the Series last year, for a brief moment, I was eight years old again. If they do it again this year, I'll be eight years old for about seven hours, and then I'll go back to being a stupid, unimaginative, impatient grown-up.
Thanks for the great write-up. We caught this over the weekend, with emotions mixed enough that we've been talking about it ever since.
In fact, I was talking with a couple of friends about it yesterday - one who saw it, one who was wondering if it would be OK for her young children. She had heard that the movie was "dark" and she was concerned that the monsters were going to be too scary. This may sound needlesly overprotective, but in her defense, movie adaptations of classic kid's lit often lean pretty heavily on the "innocent in peril" scenario for their emotional impact with kids and adults alike (even if that isn't a main theme of the orignal book). Couple that with the eerie, somber trailer and with its shadowy and forboding glimpses, and I think the film seemed forboding enough to make many parents reluctant to take a chance on the movie until they'd screened it first. The theater we were in was almost full, but there were very few kids there under Jr High age.
To their credit (and Sendak's) I think Jonze and Eggers ran counter to the usual "family fare" formulas, so much so that it took considerable pains to explain to my concerned friend exactly why, when people said "dark" they didn't mean "THAT sort of dark" (i.e. sinister/scary/etc). We're all (kids included) conditioned from a lifetime of TV/Movies to expect the standard extenal jotls of "scary" or "sad" from our entertainments, but the darkness here was much more visceral. It was not the fear of outlandish threats, but the haunting memory of every petty slight and disappointment, and your revulsion at the thought of your own awkward and irrational reactions toward them.
I mean this in a good way - I thought the film did an fine job personifying the conflicting jumble of intense but immature voices brewing in the mind of every angry kid (and all us angry kids at heart). The whole Island adventure was essentially an internal dialouge, and the neurotic interplay between the monsters really captures the feel of angrily mumbling to yourself through tears and quivering lips after being sent to your room.
That being said, this same authentic emotional instability is what kept the movie from ultimately reaching escape velocity for me. Because the puppetry and visual effects are really great, they achieve a certain suspension of disbelief. Once you start to buy into these characters you realize just how unlikeable they are. As you begin to identify with each voice within Max's head, you realize you've essentially been listening to an unhappy kid whine to himself for 101 long minutes.
My other beef is the same one you mentioned, while the essential story of the book was still there, Max's character arc was essentially eliminated. In the Sendak book there's no question that Max has stepped out of line. He's been a garden variety misbehaving brat, as even the best behaved kids are sometimes (something we never really outgrow...) In contrast, the movie spends its opening scenes justifying Max's behavior, blaming it on his sister, her friends, his doomsaying teacher, his overwrought mom, her interloper boyfriend, his absent father - clearly everyone is in the wrong here but dear little Max. Of COURSE he bit is mom, if you were him, wouldn't you?
At this point in the book, Max goes to his room, has his wild rumpus of a tantrum, eventually calms down, sorts out his feelings, and comes back out to reconcile himself with his mom and the world at large. As a kid one reason I loved the book was that, even as it validated my less socially acceptable feelings, it showed me the light at the end of that dark tunnel. It encouraged me to do what I need to to work through my hostilities, because my ability to foster the important relationships in my life was more important than indulging my inner tyrant.
Not so movie Max. After his attack he literally runs away from home. He only leaves his internal island once he becomes lonely, bored, and homesick. Only his mom is apologetic at their happy reunion, and her good feelings toward him are facilitated by her relief that it was him at the door and not a couple of cops asking her to come downtown and identify the body.
There's just not much difference in the "Before and After" shots here, and for me that ultimately that got in the way of the great look of the film. A good character will grow between opening and closing credits. That Sendak's Max did was a big part of the special juju this book hold for people, even decades later. In many ways the Jonze/Eggers Max remains the implaccable King of his own Island throughout.
Ultimately this (more than anything else) made me reluctant to recommend the film to my friend's young kids. It's not the Wild Things that are scary. What menace or danger the film held seemed to flowing from Max, not toward him. What's worse (especially from the parental perspective) is that everything about the movie says that this is just as it should be. That's a tough message for parents to deliver to children they fervently hope will soon be old enough to know better.
JE: Thanks for a very perceptive reading! You really put your finger on something, a detail I forgot to mention: You can see in mom's eyes that she is glad to have Max home, and that she feels bad about what happened. But Max never takes any responsibility for what he does, or expresses regrets. Most kids I know may not be able to keep their emotions from overwhelming them (they're only kids!), or keep from "going too far" one way or another, but they experience genuine, heartfelt regret on occasion. They say, "I'm sorry" and they want to be forgiven, to make things go back to "normal." Max doesn't do that. I think that's why I went off on that tangent about him becoming a sociopath and torturing small animals. He seems to be missing a vital component of character. (P.S. I wanted to [metaphorically] slap his mom to wake her up to what's going on in her own household, but I didn't want to literally bite her.)
While there are a lot of points here I don't agree with, they're very well thought out and definitely make for an interesting (and completely valid) read. I was going to make a really in depth argument countering yours, but then Kris Pigna went ahead and did it for me, and probably far more eloquently than I could have done it.
Although there's another bone I have to pick: there's no such thing as an anemic Karen O song. Downbeat Karen O songs? You betcha. But her songwriting and vocal stylistics are pretty much the antithesis of anemic. And I don't think that her downbeat songs (although it's worth pointing out that "Worried Shoes", arguably the most downbeat song on the soundtrack, was written by Daniel Johnston whose appeal I find baffling) suck any energy or vitality from the film either. When I think anemic indie, the first names that pop into my head are usually either Wilco or Death Cab.
"In contrast, the movie spends its opening scenes justifying Max's behavior, blaming it on his sister, her friends, his doomsaying teacher, his overwrought mom, her interloper boyfriend, his absent father - clearly everyone is in the wrong here but dear little Max. "
Again, I don't understand how in the hell you or Jim can come away from this movie with that perception. Why does everything need to spelled out? To me both the film and the character of Max in the end seem to realize what a little sh!t he's been, and it's done in much more subtle ways than having the mom scold him. Saying his reaction was justified and simply empathizing with all of the feelings that led to this reaction are two totally different things. If they wanted to justify Max's outburst, they sure went about it wrong (one of the things that sets Max off is his seeing what any casual observer would consider to be quite a tender moment between his "overwrought" mom and her "interloper" boyfriend.) To boil down all of his subtle self-discoveries in the land of the Wild Things to simply becoming "lonely, bored and homesick" make me really wonder what movie you were watching.
JE: The movie is quite clear about the parallels between Max's home life and the world of the Wild Things. I don't know that he learns any overt "lessons" (the movie would be intolerable if it got that explicit), but he is put in the position of claiming to be "king," then realizing he's no such thing, just a boy. So, perhaps he returns home somewhat chastened in that sense. (That reminds me: The "Woman, feed me!" bit just didn't play for me. Where did that come from?) But if he makes "subtle self-discoveries," how do they affect him? Why doesn't he at least express regret or say "I'm sorry"? This is part of what I mean when I say the character of Max is envisioned as an adult's romanticized version of being a child rather than being understood as a child. That's the movie they made, and it's worth noticing whether you think it coheres as a movie or not.
Ahem. To come in defense of my favorite movie of the year... :)
George G.: Great insights, but I disagree with one crucial part of your argument. You write, "In contrast, the movie spends its opening scenes justifying Max's behavior, blaming it on his sister, her friends, his doomsaying teacher, his overwrought mom, her interloper boyfriend, his absent father - clearly everyone is in the wrong here but dear little Max."
I think that's inaccurate. The movie doesn't show these elements as "justifying" his (mis)behavior, but simply as the causes of it. What the movie is then about is whether his reactions are appropriate -- about how to deal with what he feels, the confusions that those feelings bring, and how to express it all appropriately.
His anger at his sister, for example, isn't presented as though it's justified. Max is the one who starts the snowball fight, the older friends of his sister join in (they're very much still kids themselves), and one of them cheerfully destroys his igloo while caught up in the ruckus. But it's clear in the film the older kid didn't do it to be mean -- he just didn't realize how that action would affect Max, and when he does realize it upset him, the kid clearly looks regretful.
Max, then, feels anger and runs into his sister's room to destroy it, but this isn't presented as a justified response, either. It's clear he's acting out of feelings of anger he doesn't fully understand and can't quite control, and again, it's immediately clear he regrets what he did after he's done (when he realizes, for instance, that he destroyed the paper-heart-thing that I assume he made for his sister some time ago). It's made even more clear that Max regrets and is embarrassed about what he did when he tenderly (I thought) leads his mom by the hand to the room to show her what he did. Clearly, he understands he did something wrong.
Jim: This is why I also disagree with your assertion that Max never expresses regret. You write, "[Kids] say, 'I'm sorry' and they want to be forgiven, to make things go back to 'normal.' Max doesn't do that." In fact, he literally does that at one point in the movie, when he apologizes to Alexander after realizing he went too far and hurt him (and his feelings) during the dirt clod fight. Of course, this is all happening in his head, and represents (to use George G's very accurate term) Max's "internal dialogue" concerning the regret he feels when he knows he's gone too far in his behavior.
It is true Max doesn't apologize to his mom at the end, and we can differ over whether that was the right choice. For me, the ending worked perfectly. It was clear by then that Max was sorry for a lot of what he's done, was happy to be home, was a little wiser about how to control his emotions and had a better understanding of how he's just as capable as anyone else of hurting people, even if he doesn't mean to. Max's guilt, and how he works through it, is a major component of the film, I think.
JE: I'm sorry I temporarily blanked on Max's "I'm sorry" to Alexander, Kris! You're right -- that was a "breakthrough" moment for him and I forgot it was one of the things he could do over THERE that he couldn't do at home. I see what you're saying, and I thought the whole snowball fight scene perfectly balanced the way fun turns scary or upsetting just as you describe -- not because anybody was being intentionally mean, but because (at least for Max) they went too far. He tells his mom that his sister's friends destroyed his igloo... which is true in a limited sense, but is not the whole truth. He does feel guilty enough to show his mom what he did to his sister's room, but I wish that scene hadn't ended so soon. This is where my puzzlement over lack of consequences began. Why doesn't mom make him at least HELP clean up the mess he's made? Although his sister's inattention (and interest in her own friends) is what sets Max off to begin with, she pretty much drops out of the movie. (I can't help but think there was more with her, and with Mark Ruffalo as mom's boyfriend, but that they felt they needed to get to Where the Wild Things Are more quickly, and I can see why. Still, something's missing here.) If I see this movie again -- and I might! -- maybe I should think of it more like a venture into "Forbidden Games" territory than an adaptation of Sendak's children's illustration book...
Let me clarify that I have only vague memories of being read the book as a child. I held a lot of picture books close to my heart then and still do now. Honestly, WTWTA was not one of them, for whatever reason. I think it's also very significant that the author participated and approved, apparently, some or all of the film, so for critics to take it upon themselves to say it fails the original work is a bit of duty presumption.
"It emphasizes the misery over all else."
Even if you're right, I've seen so few films that truly communicate the harshness of being young that is must be a good thing for such a film to finally exist, and that should be commended.
"Max is portrayed as a budding architect..."
I'm pretty suspicious of the idea that these things that Max does are indicators of some future path. I built a lot of forts as a kid, both indoors and in the wintertime, and as an adult I have virtually no substantial interest in architecture at all. My entire 7th grade class participated freely in building a town of snow forts in the back field of our school, and following their career paths has shown no connection to this event.
"I base this on watching and listening to the kids in the audience with whom I saw the movie."
Again, just going by my own history, but I saw a lot of movies that confused/frightened/depressed me when I was young. Looking back, those experiences have grown in value, and I now appreciated my parents exposing me to challenging works. It is absolutely essential that parents teach their kids that what they are seeing is *not real*, lest they grow up to be censors. I don't mean to paint WTWTA as some kind of clinical, trial-like experience, but what a child wants is not necessarily what they need.
"the book does effortlessly, without overanalyzing."
I'm so puzzled by critics who call this movie "too psychological" or some variation of that, especially considering how they all ate up Being John Malkovich, which to me was like watching someone flipping through a book by Freud and sarcastically commenting on everything they saw. The movie is psychological, and analytical, but overly so? Where is this line I don't see?
"They don't seem capable of acting on their own"
Of course not. The film makes it pretty clear that Max is not *actually* going to an island, that these things are extensions of him, and don't really exist and therefore cannot be "beyond" his experiences and capacity. A lesser film would have allowed the audience (particularly the kids) to believe in the "reality" of the environment.
"Did you feel any of the Wild Things came to "love" Max, or vice-versa?"
Well, KW says so, but I have no idea. We have to assume that deep down, Max knows what is going on is not real. He's not schizophrenic, he wouldn't do the things he does (like sailing on the water) if he thought he was in any "real" danger. At the end, he leaves the Wild Things in some state of sadness, but because he knows they are not really there, he is capable of doing so. I think this is akin to a child shedding their attachment to a stuffed animal, for example.
Infinite thanks for your responses. Keep on keeping on.
JE: Glad to have your point of view. Just a few clarifications on my end:
I DO think the film is commendable for communicating the harshness of a kid's life, and I went out of my way to explicitly say that -- notably in the second and third paragraphs. My feelings, as I said, are ambivalent. I liked the realistic attention to the myriad trials of childhood, but miss the fun that could have rounded out the perspective. It really shouldn't matter whether the author of a book cooperates or doesn't cooperate with the makers of a movie, since the two works exist independently. But this is a famous children's book originally published back in 1963, familiar to millions of children and their parents, so it's absolutely relevant to describe how the filmmakers' approach compares to the book. The concept of filtering a book intended for children through an adult sensibility is an interesting one, and in writing about it I'm trying to communicate how I think it works, what it does, and what it doesn't do. The reason I characterize it as "over-analytical" is because (as someone said) the movie struck me more as therapy than fantasy -- too much talking about feelings rather than simply depicting them. As I said, I'm ambivalent about it. Didn't find it wholly satisfying, but found much to intrigue and admire. I understand what you're saying about Max knowing on some level that the Wild Things are his own creation, but I don't think the movie really follows through on that idea, since they also seem to have minds of their own, behaving in ways that hurt and disappoint Max. The reason I asked about the famous line from the book (and movie) that you had quoted -- "I'll eat you up, I love you so" -- is that, when it was spoken, I realized I didn't feel the love. I'm still not entirely sure what was missing...
I read into the film completely differently than you. I viewed it more as a self-revelatory experience for Max, and by the end I feel that he knows what he did was wrong and he just wants to get home to be with his mom. There's way too much to leave in a comment but I wrote about it here: reeltoreel.wordpress.com.
I loved the film. One of the most accurate portaits of the emotional psychology of a child ever committed to film. This along with superlative special effects, cinematography and filmmaking in general.
I can concede the point that young, young children will find the film too morose. I believe it to be an film targeted at a more mature audience. Spike probably intended the film to work as a piece of art intended for those adults who read the book as a child (such as myself) more than a film strictly intended for children-although this was probably of secondary concern.
That or he just didn't know how to make a film for children. I don't much care either way. I can't help but love it.
Also, if you have ten minutes Jim you should watch Spike Jonze's short film featuring Kayne West. We were once a fairytale. Also amazing.
Excellent review, Jim, even though I don't completely agree with your take I concede that I can see all your points and can't really disagree with any of them. Thanks for being fair and evenhanded in your negative take.
Most negative reviews I've read of WTWTA are so dismissive and utterly contemptuous of the movie that I have to wonder if these reviewers are actually reviewing the film or just using their "kids movie" review template like some sort of Mad Lib of criticism. There's definitely faults and weaknesses in Jonze's film, but as you point out there's also a stark honesty and realism to it as well. Plus, he had very little to craft a feature film narrative from in Sendak's book. Now some might say that they *shouldn't* have bothered to try and extrapolate from the source, but I think they found a fair take on the material.
If anything, this film contains some of the most transcendent moments I've seen in a film all year. And the monsters are truly breathtaking in the simplicity of their practical design and execution.
I definately agree with you this article. It feels like there are two halves of me, half of me which liked the movie, and half of me that feels disspointed. I feel like I can only reccommend the first half of the movie!, since after that, the plot never really seems to solve anything. We don't get to see if Max really learned anything, we can only guess, and the Wild Things themselves seem like they've been doomed to failure now that Max has abandoned them. I thought of covering this on my own blog, but you've hit it far better than I could. But if I can really say what this movie felt like: if this movie were an airplane, we like it when it goes down but we want it to pull out of the dive. This movie felt like, the airplane crashed, but everyone lived, so that makes it a happy ending! Right?... Right?... Anyone?
Well, I guess if you're problem is that he didn't explicitly tell his mom "sorry," I can't argue with that. I would like to know how you would have that scene play out without it seeming a little cheesy and on-the-nose.
I assume by your quoting my "subtle self discoveries" line you were kind of dismissing it, but I think there are a bunch of little scenes with the Wild Things where he reflects on his outburst, like seeing Carol's smashed model (reflective of his smashing a gift he made himself for his sister), or the fear of being chased and threatened to be eaten by Carol (reflecting the biting incident with his mother). I saw him learning from these things, and I think having him express these lessons overtly ("Wow, being threatened and bitten is awful! Sorry Mom! Reacting in anger by smashing something I lovingly made is useless and hurtful! Sorry Sis!") would have been overkill. We agree that these scenes are missing, but I don't agree they were necessary. I love when a writer/director trusts and respects his audience like that. I think he did express regret, though I guess not as overtly as you would like.
I do love these discussions, though (with the expection of Mike's "Amen, bro. Lame." comment. I'd like to believe that would fall under your "bad argument for a view you hold" category)
JE: Yes, an "I'm sorry" could definitely have been done in a cheesy way -- or a non-cheesy, matter-of-fact way (like the way he apologizes to Alexander). Seems like the most natural, believable thing a kid would say under the circumstances. Watching the movie, we're put in the same boat the filmmakers were: How do you fill out the story to make nine simple sentences into a feature-length film. So, I'm wondering why Max saying "I'll eat you up!" to his mom and being sent to his room (as in the book) wasn't enough for Jonze and Eggers, why they felt they had to add the boyfriend and the biting and the running away from home -- all this melodramatic psychodrama stuff. Once you put that into the movie, where do you go from there? Maybe the idea behind the movie was that Max and the Wild Things could talk about their feelings (and that's mostly what they do -- talk and talk and talk about their feelings) in ways that Max and his family at home can't. I didn't mean to dismiss your "subtle self-discoveries" line; I quoted it because I thought it was good, and was pondering how the things he did or did not work through with the Wild Things affected him and his decision to go back home again. I'm just trying to look back at the movie and see how these ideas are developed all the way through, and I do feel like something's missing, both at the beginning and the end.
Where did "Woman, feed me" come from? I immediately flashed on The Quiet Man, and John Wayne barking to Maureen O'Hara: "Woman of the house, where's my tea?"
All of this talk reinforces my main point: There's something going on with this movie if it prompts this much intelligent conversation.
One thing that hasn't been discussed are the Wild Things Ira and his mate. They had real shading and nuance, especially in their weariness, and it was all at the edges of the main Wild Things arc. I could read a lot of ethnic/immigrant tales into just their body language alone. I found myself drawn to them, like you would be to a good, subtle character actor.
JE: Having just seen "A Serious Man" the previous day, I also wondered why Judith and Ira were Jewish Wild Things.
Thank you, Jim. WTWTA was my most anticipated film of the year, based solely on the power of that extraordinary trailer. But the movie left me awfully disappointed for the exact reason you mentioned: it was such a DOWNER, and for apparently no good reason. The book of my childhood was never this morose. But Jonze (whom I love, by the way), managed to tap into the childhood angst angle, and then take it farther than was necessary. I was just waiting for Max and his furry friends to stick their heads in an oven and get it all over with. Depressing stuff.
I think Max learned the lesson himself and any punishment would have been unnecessarry - for the movie. It was basically over by the point he gets home and Jonze had to keep it feeling warm so he could have that perfect last shot. Ending the film with him accepting a punishment (Fanny and Alexander style?) may have been even more daring, especially for a kids movie. I might've preferred it, I had more of a problem with that last shot than with anything in the rest of the movie. I could feel the black out coming, and not in the good Coen Brothers way.
I think this is a good movie for kids to see, I think if I saw it when I was a nine-year-old it would be one of those Wizard of Oz type experiences. It's down, but it's so mystical and strange in its images that the sense of wonder and appreciation they build up is more than enough to make up for it. Those two owls were perfect.
Thanks for the response, Jim. The one addition I can agree with you on is making his mother single and with a "threatening" male figure (I'm always saying Mark Ruffalo is a great actor who constantly makes bad decisions on movies - then he finally is in a movie I love and is basically a face). It really adds nothing to the story that having a two-parent household would have made any different. I guess him running away was kind of arbitrary too, and when I was a kid probably my favorite part of the book was turning the pages as his room morphed into a jungle. As for the biting, I don't know. That's just something a lot of kids do. I kinda liked it as a follow-up to his "I'm going to eat you up!" exclamation.
While we're on the subject of movies about childhood being less than bright and sunny (as many overly nostalgic movies often are), I wondered what your thoughts are on the old 1940s Val Lewton (dir Gunther von Fritsch/Robert Wise) movie "The Curse of the Cat People". Now [i]there[/i] is a movie about a kid whose parent really doesn't have the right approach.
I haven't yet seen WTWTA, but it is on my short list of recent films to see soon (lately I've been busy adapting to David "Barty Crouch Jr." Tennant as 'The 10th Doctor' after just finishing with Eccleston as 'The 9th Doctor', whom I'd become rather attached to in the DW role).
I think Max learned the lesson himself and any punishment would have been unnecessarry - for the movie. It was basically over by the point he gets home and Jonze had to keep it feeling warm so he could have his perfect last shot. Ending the film with him accepting a punishment (Fanny and Alexander style?) may have been even more daring, especially for a kids movie. I might've preferred it, I had more of a problem with that last shot than with anything in the rest of the movie. I could feel the black out coming, and not in the good, Coen Brothers-y way.
I think this is a good movie for kids to see, I think if I saw it when I was a nine-year-old it would be one of those Wizard of Oz type experiences. It's down, but it's so mystical and strange in its images that the sense of wonder and appreciation they build up is more than enough to make up for it. Those two owls were perfect.
Anyway, did anyone think that Forrest Whitaker and Catherine O'Hara's characters could've represented Max's absent pop and stepmom? Sorry if this has been brought up.
Did you ever see "The Indian in the Cupboard" (1995), Jim? That was another movie where a kid discovers the horrible consequences that come with playing God. And, like "Where the Wild Things Are", it was a good movie, but Frank Oz and Melissa Mathison also made the same mistakes that Jonze and Eggers are making now. They raised a lot of serious adult questions that they weren't exactly prepared to answer.
The whole screenplay of "Where the Wild Things Are" owes something to Melissa Mathison's scripts, actually. Max Records is giving a Henry Thomas type of performance; this kid is screwed up because his father is gone. There was a scene in "E.T." when Elliot tries to convince his family that there's a goblin out in the backyard, and fails. "Dad would believe me," he mutters. It's the same situation in this movie. The fact that there's no longer a man of the house gives Max an excuse to turn sexist and exert alpha-male control. ("Woman, FEED ME!")
Or how about Melissa Mathison's script for Scorsese's "Kundun" (1997)? Kid gets taken away from his parents to become the next Dalai Llama, and in some ways his lack of parental guidance and the common knowledge that comes with it results in his banishing from Tibet. In "Where the Wild Things Are", Max hasn't really been taught how to create his own government and has to leave immediately before he falls under the threat of rebellion.
So that's what I think Jonze and Eggers were going for: the Mathison approach. Now, maybe they weren't inspired by ALL THREE of those movies, but at least one of them, maybe. I did like how they kept the absence of Max's father a secret. In "E.T.", Elliot actually finds out about the whereabouts of his father before his own mother does: "He's in Mexico with Sally."
JE: I haven't seen "Indian in the Cupboard."
I guess I looked at it as a movie that was exclusively geared to parents, especially young parents, who are rediscovering what childhood means, while coping with the fears of raising a child (the stuff with the sun exploding seemed to me to be directed specifically at parents who raise young children while hearing on the news what global warming will do to the world, maybe not within our lifetime but our kids' for sure). So there was this weird mix of nostalgia and navel-gazing in the movie, of paranoia and hope. It made a lot of sense to me when I read that Jonze listened to Arcade Fire's "Funeral" during the writing process, which reflects that life is sad and you have little control of it, and romanticizes not childhood but the way that children cope with problems.
On one hand, frankly, it made me a little uncomfortable. I feel that my generation (I'm 34) is too nostalgia-fueled, and copes with problems by turning back to childhood and hiding ourselves in movies based on our childrens' books or toys, and fantasy sports or whatever. So it seemed like this was a movie where the filmmakers almost celebrated this, turning to childhood themselves and telling a story about a kid who was constantly retreating to various wombs (the snow fort, the sleeping pile, the fort, the monster's belly) to escape the harsh realities of his life.
That said, like you, I had a certain admiration to the film, and the care that went into it. I thought as good as the monsters were, the first 20 minutes were brilliant. It was a highly effective approach to look at childhood by placing a handheld camera at eye-level to an 8-year-old and offer no rationalization about his actions. Beautifully shot, edited, and acted.
A quick response to other commenters:
I really liked the first commenter's post, about how Max is on the cusp of not being a kid anymore. The constant use of teeth in the movie certainly backs this up, from Max's vampire story, to the monster's teeth, to Carol's little monologue about his teeth, to the biting incident that sets the whole story off.
Also: I think the point of Mark Ruffallo's character was found in the scene where Max sees him and his mom whispering, basically speaking a language to each other that he is not privy to and cannot fully understand, and how this is echoed with the owls in the monster world.
JE: Thanks for a very nicely written response -- and the inventory of connections between Max's home and where the Wild Things are. (As for the teeth, it also struck me that Max has already been through the process of losing his baby teeth, and that the dream of losing one's teeth is universal -- ask Freud.) I really like what you say about young parents rediscovering (and in some ways privileging) childhood through their own young kids -- which is exactly the sense I got from the movie. Eggers apparently has two young kids -- and, of course, we already know he raised his much younger brother.
The comments on here have been so interesting to read. I took my eight year old daughter to see it at the weekend. She had loved the book and seen the trailers they showed incessantly on Nickleodeon. I warned her before it started that it might not be your 'usual' kids movie, in that there might be sad, scary and very dramatic parts that she might not be expecting. After the furious beginning, in which you are not exactly sure whether the dog is getting hurt or not, the first moment that surprised me was immediately after the kids destroy his snow cave. How many times have you seen something like that happen in movies and the victim just picks himself up, looks downcast, and quietly shuffles off screen. Here, Max cries. A truthful, honest reaction. I encourage everyone to listen to Stephen Tobolowsky's review in the Slashfilm podcast, he very eloquently relates how refreshing it is to see a film that shows just how painful it can be a nine year old boy, one who realises his behaviour can affect the world around him. My daughter loved the movie, we both did.
I'm going to have to vehemently disagree with the sentiment that WTWTA is somehow "privileging" childhood or this particular boy, an interpretation that bleeds into reflexive bashing about self-regarding adults who listen to indie music. (Which doesn't mean that those people don't comprise some part of the audience. But, as someone in the Slashfilm podcast pointed out, The Nightmare Before Christmas becoming an emo/goth totem has little to do with what's actually in the movie.)
Max is a young boy, he doesn't need much to get provoked into a tantrum. His home life isn't particularly hellish, and I believe he DOES help his mom clean up the mess he made in his sister's room. The situations that provoke Max -- the new bf, the sister who isn't paying attention -- seem like a natural subtext to pull out of Sendak's book.
And when he bites his mother, it seems like his initial reaction is shock and instant regret. But his mother is also caught off-guard by the bite, and her justifiably angry reaction probably marks the first time Max has ever done anything to make his mother THAT MAD. And so he runs away because, to a kid, this experience of having a parent be genuinely angry at you is traumatic. This is not a setup for a story about a poor misunderstood artiste, it's actually a pretty universal portrait of a tantrum.
The Wild Things are extensions of Max's feelings, yes, but his role as "king" and de facto supervisor means that he gets to view his tantrums and his feelings the way a parent would see them. The mechanism of the plot, or what exists of it, is Max learning that his (or Carol's, his alter ego) feelings have effects on other people. Which is part of the "adult perspective" that Jim picked up on, but then doesn't that contradict that claim that Jonze and Eggers are being too precious about the little boy's feelings?
As for the charge that this movie is "morose" with respect to the monsters, I can't really disagree. But I think that that mood stays true to the "stark realism". This is a movie about a kid who's at the moment where he's learning that it's not always about other people making life nice for him. That even if his family's behavior make it difficult for him emotionally, he has the responsibility to empathize with them and even to try and make things better because they're his family. I can't think that a movie that wants to be faithful to the transition from id-centered kid-dom to the real world of navigating relationships and empathy can be anything other than difficult and a little sad.
A lot of people are having hard time getting over the Jonze/Eggers/Karen O/Urban Outfitters/Arcade Fire bermuda triangle of Hipster/Twee. I don't really blame them since I had a similar reaction to the trailer, but save for Karen O's distracting score, this movie was pretty free of any references to pop cultural zeitgeist.I'm going to conclude that those people are reacting less to the movie itself than to a marketing campaign.
As for the charge that this movie needs to be more "joyful", I would say: Maybe, but that doesn't mean that what is onscreen is invalidated or less compelling. It's like the people who are most concerned about WTWTA's darkness walked into the theater expecting "Babe" and got something closer to "Au Hasard, Balthazar." (I'm not saying that WTWTA is as good as the Bresson, but it's at least as good as "Babe".) One doesn't invalidate the other as a portrait of an animal, it's just the perspectives are different. Of course, I'm part of the camp that believes that the negativity is about the way the movie was marketed to kids rather than what the movie itself wanted to express and how people are somewhat annoyed at the discrepancy between the two.
Also: 400 Blows. Watch the last scene. At least Max gets to go home again. The last shots of WTWTA are forgiveness and joy and contentment that first had to be earned.
JE: Thanks, Paula. You make an eloquent argument on behalf of the film. I think you are on the mark about the marketing. This is a book that millions have grown up with -- it's spare and largely left to the imagination. Making a feature film called "Where the Wild Things Are" sets up a lot of expectations that this particular movie has no intention of fulfilling. (Hence my first two sentences: This is Spike Jonze's movie, not Maurice Sendak's book.) The tone is completely different -- as are the circumstances and even (most notably) the age of Max. For me, the Wild Things got into too much psychobabble about their feelings (and Max's). I appreciate what the movie was trying to do (and I'm still awestruck by those creatures), but I think by adopting it's adult-looking-back perspective it takes itself too seriously. Still like lots of stuff in it though -- particularly James Gandolfini and Catherine O'Hara (and Paul Dano and Chris Cooper and Forrest Whitaker, in smaller parts) who give some of the year's best performances.
Wait till this dud lands at the dollar store and buy some popcorn and go home. The kids in the theater did not enjoy it. I heard one dad say it was 111 minutes to long as he left with his kids.
I have a 20-something son named Max who is threatening to change his name. I rate this psychotic gem .5 star and that is probably a star to high.
I felt it was trash. I was perplexed that you and Ebert failed to mention the lazy direction through pointless close-up shaky-cam shots, especially after the big stink you made about Star Trek (which I also agreed with). Whenever the film would take a few seconds to use a tripod and do some wide shots (the brief moments in the desert, for instance), it would be actually visually interesting, but aside from those few moments, everything was a close-up, underlit mess.
I couldn't stomach the film for the same reason you had: it was emotionally one-dimensional. However, what really bothered me was the sense of self-satisfaction beneath it; it was patently obvious that Jonze was entirely convinced of his own genius and profundity when the whole thing didn't get any deeper than "childhood can be sad." He came off as a poseur just trying to appeal to indie hipsters.
To make a children's movie for the ages, you must aim straight for the children. They are far more discerning than they are usually given credit for. This is a "children's movie" for adults. It could have used a lot more rumpus and a lot less hand-wringing. A better flick could have been made of my wife and I trying vainly to keep our children in their seats and quiet during this interminable "emo" sob story so contrary to the wild fun of the source material, which had emotional resonance without dragging the Wild Things onto the therapist's couch. No fun!