In Maurice Sendak’s much-beloved childhood tale it is in the wake of a childhood hissy-fit that young Max is transported to a woodland wonderland, where nature is a limitless playground and monsters roam in place of mankind. Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are perfects the simple tale with moving visuals that seem to have leaped from the page, staying true to color, shape and texture, but his attempt to flesh out the monster’s identities and their personal relationships with Max ultimately detached me from the fantasy world created from one boy’s raw imagination basking in the peak of innocence.
With his older sister deeply immersed in her teenage social life, and his mother (Catherine Keener) a burned-out business woman, Max is left on his own to entertain himself, and in doing so he puts to use his adolescent ennui in building forts and creating small fantasy worlds. Fleeing the house before dinner is served to a crowded dinner table, with boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo) in attendance, he outruns his mother en route to the riverfront. Jonze’s music-video paced edits and Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman Karen O’s driving singalongs backed by an energetic boy’s-choir illuminate the new camp-fire lit realm Max’s tiny raft bobs into.
Dressed in an iconic mom-made wolf jumpsuit, the monsters embrace the boy as their little king. Moonlight Howls, Sunrise Salutations and ceaseless group wrestling matches become the daily activities of the tribe. Max bonds closest with Carol (James Gandolfini) a furry, feathered beast who most likely reigned as leader before the boy royalty stumbled into their woods, he is the archetypal ‘father-figure’ Jonze has elected to fill the paternal-void in Max’s reality. With the troupe taking orders from the darling delinquent for a promise of happiness in return, little by little the soap-opera subplot takes place. Jonze takes liberties with the book’s text–which, upon whose publication amounted to only ten sentences of type–and each monster is developed with his own personal quirks and relations (including Judith and Ira the monsters in love) begin to weigh upon Max with their need for his attention, as well as their jealousy for the others in the community. One could patch the similarities to Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’. The need for attention is what fuels Max’s rage and anger in the real world, and where the wild things are is where he confronts the reversal. Above all the emotions he experiences as his fantasy world turns dim, it is his own growing homesickness that eventually steers him back to reality. Cradled by one of his lovable beasts, he questions how they cope without mothers of their own.
It’s an unusual adventure story, especially for today’s youth that is used to magical prep-school wizards and war-rigged robots for thrills and escape, I’d like to believe that with the release of the film, a revival of the book may succeed in bringing joy to as many young minds as it did for generations before the captivating trailer flooded your cable tv. Max Records is an addictivly adorable protagonist with the same charm I found in a young Ed Furlong in 1991′s Terminator 2. It’s a celebration of imagination that encourages the young as well as the old to delight in the endless possibility simple fable can afford.
Already chimed in negatively in the other thread. I’d add this link to the discussion, since I agree with just about every part of it:
http://twitchfilm.net/reviews/2009/10/where-the-wild-things-are-review-1.php
Someone just mentioned to me that the characters in WTWTA are meaner to each other than the characters in Margot at the Wedding. So true.
Fabulous movie. Oi, can you see Eggar’s fingerprints on everything.
Kids liked it a lot. The Boy was scared by Max’s behaviour to his mom and running away. The Girl was into it from the get-go and wanted to watch it again right away.
Lots of Questions afterwards.
Pixar look out, you are not the only one who can make transcendent childrens flicks. WTWTA may indeed trump anything the have done.
(For what it is worth, I thought this was a perfect film…)
Oh, and the book needs no revival, Laura, it has been selling steadily and read steadily since its first publication. I’m surprised a movie took this long to be made, all things considered….
thanks for the correction. Guess I should have scoured the figures a little more closely before posting.
“WTWTA may indeed trump anything the have done.”
Even Cars was better.
Okay, clearly I’m disappointed enough that I realize I’m itching for a fight over this thing. Until I calm down and stop being a little bitch (watching Baron Munchausen and A Fish Called Wanda today helped) I’d just post another link or two that says what I would say without too much hyperbole and prodding, that also acknowledges what works.
http://lukehickman.blogspot.com/2009/10/where-wild-things-are.html
Have to agree Goon, Hickman nails it in that review… it’s totally faithful to the artistry of the children’s book. the monsters look incredible… I said that every time I saw the trailer, in simple, everything looks REAL.
too long.
too existential… yes?
almost Van Sant’s ‘Gerry’ with the vast emptiness and random dialog…small tasks/goals, repetition.
(Loved Gerry though. Very effective… definitely not for children, takes patience).
in 1986 Sendak noted in an interview that the monsters were inspired by his Jewish family members waiting for dinner at his mother’s house in Brooklyn (she was the slowest cook in Brooklyn he added). How relatives always get in the children’s faces with the typical: “you’ve gotten so big! You’re so fat! I could Just eat you up!” Each monster was a member of his family. Children always focus in on strange details of their elders…. bad teeth, weird moles… these all came into play in creating the creatures… I’m trying to find the interview on WNYC.org…. caught it on the radio today.
I really think if it was much shorter (even though that was impossible), or even just barely over an hour, as 9 is, that I may have liked it a lot more. I wonder if I would like it better on rewatch, but unlike Star Trek and a few other recent disappointments, its just not going to be soon.
Saying anything like ‘it looks bad’ or ‘the soundtrack sucks’ or a number of other things would be clear bullshit, for the most part the esthetic is nailed even though I think it wasn’t entirely completely flushed out or varied. Hearing the soundtrack in advance perhaps made me expect a lot more sweetness, at least as much “All is Love” as “Worried Shoes” in feel.
A lot of the people who liked it teared up during it, and I actually did as well… at the beginning. The earliest scenes before the fantasy are very strong, the look on Max’s face after his igloo is destroyed is devastating and the most lasting image of the entire film for me.
Even though I’m thumbing down on it and poking fun here and there, the fact is there’s enough going right with it that I can’t in good conscience tell people to skip it either.
I rewatched Baron Munchausen today, as well as revisited certain segments of the Fall. Both of those spoke to me as more effective ‘childhood’ movies, not just because I overall prefer them visually, but because they varied the sadness/joy in a way that rings more true to me, and there’s more to love in the supporting creatures/characters. Munchausen isn’t my ‘perfect movie’ but The Fall is pretty damn close. It would be one of my first go-to’s and few re-buys when I get a Blu Ray.
I teared up a few times in the first 20 minutes…
I don’t see a wrong note in WILD THINGS ARE, who says that stories have to have a focused narrative (Good call on the Gerry mention), there is always an ‘emotional plot thrust’ going on in the so-called repetition, there are new things for max to discover about himself, selfishness, and the consequences of easy thrills.
Yea, I loved this film.
bit like Oz too…
his mean sister, furry dog and mother becomes familiar monsters, the snowballs become mud-piles and the igloo a large dome-like stick-fort.
Heard someone link Carol to the Cowardly Lion today.
there’s unfocused narratives, and then there’s spinning your wheels in the mud. I think I pinpoint the part where it just lost me somewhere around the “war”. It hit its rut and never got out.
“there are new things for max to discover about himself, selfishness, and the consequences of easy thrills”
Each lesson is the same – you can’t make everyone happy. It’s beaten into the ground, seriously. Nobody can tell me I didn’t get it. I got it all over my face and even in my hair. I don’t think Max ultimately really clearly learned anything. I don’t think he even said sorry, he just runs away, comes home, and there’s cake. Maybe a forgivable nitpick if I wasn’t already bored.
okay the last line I wrote is a stretch… he goes home because he fails his mission “will you make the sadness go away?” answer: no. you will fail and they will eat you. that’s why this film is ultimately a depressing, joyless story.
tries to help Carol destroy things – others are unhappy.
calls for a rumpus but theres still one off to the side shy and unhappy. Tries to heal the divide by introducing KWs new friends to the group, but Carol is unhappy. Organizes a funtime war, but the choosing of sides and people getting hurt – unhappy. comes clean to make a world with no secrets – unhappy. The goat shows he’s been unhappy through all of it because nobody listens to him. I don’t see what I missed here, what makes each situation so unique.
My main argument has been that the repetition drew me out, frustrated, even bored, to the point of disliking the wild things and seeing them as avatars instead of actual characters. That’s what I’m stickling on here.
Goon, Max is still a 9 year old child. And that is sort of how the book plays out. You do not have to ‘succeed’ to learn, in fact many people learn more from their failures than their successes. The mutual understanding and love for Max and his Mom at the end of the film is pretty clear, and some of that had to be garnered from Max’s experience with the wild things…
“You do not have to ’succeed’ to learn, in fact many people learn more from their failures than their successes”
Obviously, but this doesn’t undo the fact that it was a repetition of the same point. And if you want to say “Some people need repetition to learn”, this doesn’t justify being uninvolving. Every wild thing is made increasingly one dimensional for the sake of building Max’s character and filling future “The psychology of Where the Wild Things Are” books. So to me there was never actually any built up “Max, you gotta get outta there” tension.
You know the saying, when a movie’s lost you, you start nitpicking other things. It’s weird that he gets home after running away and it plays like that, I don’t care if it was in the book, they threw away the bedroom transformation for the sake of a darker realism.
Is Max’s love for his mom truly clear, or is it like when Homer told Marge: “I can offer you what no one else can: complete and utter dependence!”. I don’t know, I was tuned out and ready to leave at that point and not really looking for subtle gleams of unselfish love in his eyes. He still seemed pretty bratty, I expect in the reality Jonze is working this movie in, Max would be tearing up the carpet and writing on the walls within a week.
I guess I can see what you’re saying about repetitiveness, Goon, but it didn’t feel at all repetitive to me while I was watching it. The combination of visuals and music, and the alternations between joy (though you’re right, it wasn’t always joy for all characters) and sadness all worked perfectly for me, and I could’ve sat there in that mood, in that experience, for another hour. Also, even if I grant repetitiveness, I don’t see how that would be out of character for the imagination of a 9-year-old…the stories children tell, and the stories they want to hear, are very repetitive. Max repeats things with the wild things that he’s done at home (chasing and wrestling with the dog, snowball fights, creating forts), because that’s what he knows and enjoys – but with the wild things, there are no restraints that make him stop before things get ugly. He gets to see the consequences of his unthinking behaviours.
Also, I found the mirroring of Max’s real-life family situations among the wild things to be really varied and interesting – there was no one-to-one correlation. Laura points out Carol’s role as Max’s absent father, and in the way Carol takes Max under his wing and shows him around the world and becomes the first to accept him, yes. But he’s also clearly Max’s alter-ego – selfish, wanting to keep the family together and outsiders out (Max’s father seems to have left, and Max acts out in rebellion to that loss as well as his mother’s welcoming of the boyfriend), responds with violence and anger. KW is Max’s father in abandoning the group, Max himself in running away and creating basically imaginary friends, and Max’s mother both in bringing in unwanted outsiders to the family and conversely, sheltering Max from others’ anger.
The way that people, especially children, revision their problems in imagination and storytelling is fascinating to me, and WTWTA did not disappoint me in that. The fact that no character is exactly analagous to anyone in the real world means that Max is learning things about himself and how to relate to others, but not in a cut-and-dried “lesson” manner. It’s about gaining from the whole experience organically.
“I don’t see how that would be out of character for the imagination of a 9-year-old…the stories children tell, and the stories they want to hear, are very repetitive.”
When Max has a chance to tell his vampire story in the beginning, it’s anything but repetitive, its more along the lines of the storytelling you get in The Fall.
“He gets to see the consequences of his unthinking behaviours.”
I’d argue almost every action he tried to take with the monsters had the intention of bringing them together. Max is still bratty, but far less selfish with the Things than in the beginning. The lesson is thus much more “Can’t win don’t try” then the Oompa Loompa’s “you asked for it” fate. Whenever there is hope, it is swiftly crushed.
I agree entirely that there are pieces of his reality and his own emotions all over each character. I don’t think anyone would deny that. But my point is that this is done at the expense of those characters, for the benefit of a repetitive point that wasn’t entertaining.
Oh, as much as the Wild Things reflect other things in Max’s reality, I do think some people are going overboard. I’m sure some of these things were meant to be there, but a good number of others is people reading further into things than intended. This is what I’m talking about when I say that its going to fill future pop psychology books. Some hack writer will claim that the Bull is Max’s gay side or something.
@goon, “But my point is that this is done at the expense of those characters, for the benefit of a repetitive point that wasn’t entertaining.”
Never did i feel that the film was not interesting or creative (and by extension, entertaining). In terms of the wild things characters, they are in the book and in the film not conventional ‘real characters’ as much as they are magnified reflections of Max, so I think in this case, a pass should be given, they are exactly what they should be in terms of the storytelling. I thought they were magnificent reflections and refractions of Max’s personality.
I can’t conjure up a pass that free. “Its his imagination” and “But he’s 9″ are just coming across now like Transformers’ “What did you expect? Its about giant robots” last ditch spin to turn every filmmaking flaw into a conceptual feature.
You’re right, the only story we see Max tell in the real world is the vampire one, and it’s short and straightforward. And I could say that for all we know his other stories are similar or variations on the vampire story, but we don’t know, and I’d be projecting. I was saying that in general of children, but perhaps it doesn’t apply to Max. I’m not sure there’s enough evidence in the film to judge that either way.
“I’d argue almost every action he tried to take with the monsters had the intention of bringing them together.”
I agree with you completely on this. He (and Carol) want to bring everyone together – and that’s what he wants in his real life, too. But everything he tries is based on something that makes HIM happy. When he divides up teams, he chooses the people he likes to be the good guys. The lesson I got wasn’t “don’t try because you’ll fail” but “make sure you consider what other people want, too, because you’re not the only one your decisions affect.” Maybe KW will stay, maybe she won’t, but it’s not good for anyone if she stays against her will. Maybe a dirt clod fight is fun, but not if someone’s getting hit in the back when they’re tired of playing. Everyone’s world doesn’t revolve around him. I’m not sure he won’t slide back into his old behaviour once he gets home, at least now and then – but I think there’s more hope than there was before he left. The moment when KW was protecting him from Carol’s anger was a great one, I think…he simultaneously was able to see things from his mother’s point of view (“You’re out of control”) and his own (“He’s just scared”).
And saying that Jonze told a story from the point of view of a child, with a child’s storytelling style and character development appropriate to a child’s imagination is a far different thing than saying “it’s about giant robots so whatever.” The latter is an unfounded excuse, the former is understanding a literary device. Next thing you’re going to argue that the change in writing style from the beginning of The Color Purple to the end is an inconsistency showing that Alice Walker doesn’t know how to write.
“The latter is an unfounded excuse, the former is understanding a literary device. ”
No Jandy, my point throughout is that the story that did get told simply burnt out/got boring/repetitive/etc, and so responding to that by saying that any repetition or lack of character is part of a ‘literary device’ to me is a sad way to push a flaw as a feature.
It may come across that I hated it much more than I did from the amount of argument being made. It was a 2/5 from me with the majority of what I liked being frontloaded. What I did like I liked for almost the same reasons – the difference is I eventaully got sick of it and what it was saying.
I wondered why the sister wasn’t it in the final scene. There was something wonderful about the silent reunion between mother and child but since his conflict with his sister is what initially wound him up and disappointed him so much earlier in the day (and his relationship with KW felt to me very much like Surrogate Big Sis), it felt strange to me that she wasn’t part of the conclusion.
Have you all seen this behind the scenes featurette?
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=64165320
wow, that was not the film I was expecting. I guess I was expecting some wild rumpus adventure story and instead, like others here have been saying, its meditative existential meandering. I think a second viewing may make me love this film, right now I like it a lot, but still kind of caught off guard by what I just watched. I am reminded that as a kid two of my favorite films were Dark Crystal and The Neverending Story, and these too had undercurrents of existentialism, and even as a kid I felt drawn to that sublime quality. The farewell to Carol in WTWTA was insanely emotional for me, in my head I can tell myself it is contrived and overwrought but I still felt it, and I felt a lot of things watching this, not boredom though.
wow. I saw the film a couple hours ago and it feels like a dream, definitely tapped something in me.
also caught the trailer to Fantastic Fox and that looks awesome too.
@Goon: “did get told simply burnt out/got boring/repetitive/etc”
Clearly your issue with the film, remind me again when the boring parts were? I never experienced that, so I can’t really convince you otherwise, but Jandy is certainly onto the key story of the film.
I didn’t even see Max’s sister as a major character. I found K.W. to be far more of the mother surrogate when watching.
In terms of closure with sis, Max was going to be set off by something, lack of attention from Mom, Sis’s friends and lack of support, it doesn’t really matter, It is fairly clear that Max is simply starved for attention and has trouble with working out his own issues (no father, etc.)
In terms of ‘why didn’t Keener (mom) yell at Max for taking off like that’ -> simply she was relieved he was back. Perhaps if the film went 5 minutes longer there would be a scene of her yelling at her son or chastising him.
The silent reunion was a good ending considering Max’s “Wild Journey” was more him coming to grips with his own selfishness and how it is not easy to find a balance in relationships. (Silence with knowing looks often can come to mean ‘understanding’ in cinema and there is some sort of understanding achieved.
good point KSpad, that does seem odd. Clearly the valentine motif was carried over with Max’s reconciliation with Carol and you would think that would play out between him and his Sis.
Easily, my best of the year so far, and I don’t really see anything overtaking it. Every frame of this movie felt intensely personal. And the ending was pitch-perfect. Hopefully, this is one of those movies that is looked at as classic ten years down the road. Right now, the critical reception is pretty mixed and all over the place.
@ . “Its his imagination” and “But he’s 9″ are just coming across now like Transformers’ “What did you expect? Its about giant robots”
ahh, Goon… Goon. I feel for you buddy. First Inglourious then this, it must be shaping up to be a pretty disappointing year for cinema from where you’re standing. I can relate because that’s how I felt in 2005 when I hated A History of Violence while all my friends called it the best film of the year.
To say that Max doesn’t learn any lesson is to substantially misread the film. I think even Kurt, who I am over all agreeing with, misses the mark on why Max banishes himself to Where The Wild Things Are Island and what lesson he takes from the experience.
Think of Max as the two year old who just learned to walk (yeah yeah, I have no idea when kids learn to walk)careening around the kitchen at top speed smashing into things and getting hurt on sharp corners. But the sharp corners in this are the emotions of others which both get hurt and hurt you back. And that’s what he learns from the Monsters. It doesn’t have anything to do with trying to please everyone or appreciating your loved ones. Ultimately I guess it is a selfish lesson. How not to get hurt. You’re right he never does apologize (and we don’t get closure with his sister which I would’ve appreciated )but It’s pretty clear to me that’s he’s absorbed this lesson by the end, and therefore has to leave WTWTA Island as he’s grown up substantially. He must leave this particular creation of childhood and never return.
I completely agree about the look on Max’s face after the snow fort. But there’s another equally memorable part after he trashes his sister’s room and he takes a second to be terrified by his own mayhem. Like he suddenly realizes that this is something he can’t undo. It’s a feeling I remember having many times when I was little.
That is probably my favorite moment of the film because it accurately depicts the terrible ferocity of a child’s inner world. This theme is the key to the book, and the movie is 1000% faithful to it. I think most children’s films would’ve completely chickened out and soft balled it but this detail is vital to the story.
So, I don’t see where it’s meditative or existential (Mr. Rot is completely lost again. What a surprise), instead it’s rawly emotional.
As for the meanding repitition of the plot. It’s not anything I’d want to apologize for. I hate plot driven films and I’ll take meandering a thousand times over some bullshit about chasing around magic rocks or whatever it is that drives most kids films. Building forts, mudfights, making new friends; the plot covered all the ground I could’ve hoped for. It’s the type of thing I would’ve dreamt up when I was his age. It was paced like one of Calvin and Hobbes’ adventures in the backyard.
@ but his attempt to flesh out the monster’s identities and their personal relationships with Max ultimately detached me from the fantasy world created from one boy’s raw imagination basking in the peak of innocence.
It’s unfortunate that you see it that way. And it seems to be a problem I’m hearing a lot from critics. The Twitch Film review Goon linked to seemed to have the same problem. RE: why does Max, by proxy director Spike Jonze, invent such dreary friends for himself?
I think the answer to this question is the key to the film. The personalities are completely the invention of the film, and if your above quote from Maurice Sendick is accurate then Spike and Eggers absolutely nailed Sendick’s intention.
Until this afternoon I always thought the Wild Things represented Max inner tantrums. And that’s sort of true but The Wild Things are much more overtly Max’s childlike representation of the adults in his life.
They’re large and intimidating but sometimes friendly. They speak in the passive aggressive resentful language of adults (I’m working hard and no one’s helping me! I guess you don’t care). They express their love in a confounding manner by hurting each other. They have facial hair and grotesque features like pronounced noses. They are allowed to yell but tell Max he’s not allowed. They tell Max he’s breaking things when he’s trying to help.
But Max has created a type of adulthood that he can comprehend and co-exist with better. So they’re rough and rowdy. They appreciate max’s genius for destruction and elect him king because he’s the best at telling stories.
It’s interesting how they all believe everything Max says. But only Judith challenges him with skepticism. She doesn’t think the fort sounds like a good idea and tries to invent things that he’s powers wouldn’t be able to break. Ultimately Max wins because he’s the much better storyteller.
not that I want to get into a semantic debate with you Rusty, but I would have thought it is pretty obvious that the stories with the wild things contain absurdity, alienation, loneliness, angst, and like Goon mentions, the mode is repetitious. There is much emphasis placed on what it is to belong to society, to be an individual that can be loved and experience things, and the pangs of not living up to all this is everywhere expressed in the film. I, for one, didn’t read the film as some kind of superficial kid just wanting to be liked story, the way it is directed, the emphatic scenes with Max talking with characters in states virtually depressed, there is more going on here than pop psychology and imagination run amok, its a brooding film that pulls no punches in its existential expressions. Christ, one scene has Max in a metaphoric womb, I don’t know how much more it can be about the deeper aspects of existence than that. By saying this, I don’t mean the film is heady and doctrinal, just that the film itself seems to be brooding about these things, it uses a child’s perspective to convey these things but it is no less emphatic.
About Carol. I don’t completely disagree that he is some ways a surogate father for Max. But I think they’re best friends because Carol is Max extrapolated to adulthood. Carol’s tantrum at the end is obviously analogous to Max’s tantrum at the begining. They both trash the domociles of others. Notice they both have the same hobby as well; Carol’s little model looks just like Max’s.
Seeing his emotional storms manifest in such a large creature (like he’d be when he’s an adult) is what finally makes the lesson sink in. Carol anger hurts those he cares about and drives the person he loves away from him. Max decides he can’t behave like that anymore. Now having grown up a little he must leave and return back to Where The Grown Ups Are.
@Rusty
I would agree Carol is an extension of Max, but on one level it is all an extension of him… the billy goat character never being listened to is an extension of Max’s sense of being unheard by his mom while her friend is over. I would agree with Goon that I don’t think there is a puzzle to work out in the film, that there are multiple readings that are probably valid (Carol is Max, is his dad, is his sister), and that kind of ambiguity, that MEDITATIVE quality is something I like about it.
Rot, I guess I can do ‘existential’. WTWTA is a story about a little boy learning to exist. So, you’re right.
Now explain meditative.
Maybe I don’t really disagree with you at all. You just describe everything in the same terms so it all comes out sounding like the same tedious lecture of a movie. You could’ve crossed out Wild Things and written Limits of Control and it would’ve applied just as well.
Unlike LoC this is an imaginative, vibrant an emotional film. I’d like to emphasis those qualities.
I don’t think its’ a puzzle. Except in the sense that a lot of people don’t understand it. It’s so easy to assume that the Wild Things are representations of Max’s inner world of childhood. But infact in the film they take at least as much (I think more) from the outer world of adults (look at the way Carol caries Max on his shoulders.). According to Laura’s quote Maurice Sendick sees’ it that way too.
It’s something that’s never come across for me until right now.
And unlike the Goat One. Carol is directly analogous to Max at several points. His model building being the most obvious.
I hate this film. It is absolutely transparent and I was insulted that I – a 30 year old extremely educated individual – was the target audience.
I’m not surprised you loved it Kurt. You were the intended audience. I got every nuance of this movie so well that I despised it.
I just found it to be a terrible misuse of the source material. NONE of the subtext in the film is present in the book, in fact in the back, Max returns from the island unchanged.
way too much to catch up with here, so forgive if it seems like I’m just picking randomly and ignoring anyone:
“remind me again when the boring parts were?”
Like I said, it was a gradual ease into boredom, but the point where I felt like I really was disliking the movie was around when they had the ‘war’.
@Rusty – I love Inglourious Basterds. I was initially disappointed with that too as I mentioned, but as I mentioned then, I never had anything to actually dislike and knew I needed a rewatch before making up my mind, and I knew I was tired and in a bad mood. I was psyched up and ready for this but it didnt connect. I’ll never say that its impossible for me to flip flop on this, but I see it as far less likely.
“But there’s another equally memorable part after he trashes his sister’s room and he takes a second to be terrified by his own mayhem. Like he suddenly realizes that this is something he can’t undo.”
I’ll agree there 100%. Like I said, the meloncholy in those early parts of the film literally moved me to bittersweet tears. I really wish that the fantasy world was going to have some relief for Max, but instead I watched his hopes be destroyed again and again and again, and even though parts of the Wild Things world were entertaining, there was absolutely nothing transcendent the way those first scenes were. Nothing in particular stands out for me.
So I’m in the position that I can relate to the love some have for it, and can relate to Orange’s outright hate as well. But I lean toward the negative overall, and seeing people say that I somehow didn’t get it is a bit condescending, as if “getting it” automatically equals a love for its overall construction and message, as if disliking it means you weren’t paying attention.
If Carol is a direct analogue for Max, then he wrote himself a valentine message? I still think its deliberately vague, and who are all these other character’s representative of, I mean we only know of three, maybe four characters in the real world… and to get to Agent Orange’s comment, to me that it WASN’T this fixed allegory to work out is part of the reason I like it, its more emotional undercurrents breaking through in his play, but its not that structured, its not something that you must GET, like an M. Night twist. I say something is meditative when it is not so plot streamlined, but wanders around (how many times were people sitting around looking at the horizon, talking about life issues?), and I imagine I could watch this film many times and get different things because of this lack of solvable subtext. You feel it, but apparently, its not for everyone.
An analogy to consider my disappointment:
- how Kurt was disappointed in the early scenes of Up not translating into something he could enjoy the rest of the way through, mixed with…
- how Andrew can watch a documentary and then give up when it seems its spinning its wheels making the same point over and over again. It loses him.
I get Goon’s apprehension, something felt a bit off at times through the film for me, and add to it I really wasn’t expecting this kind of film when I paid for my ticket, but the more I think about it the better it is getting. This is a bit of a slow burn enjoyment for me.
some interesting bits in the film I liked:
The whole sun dying idea (that is as existential as it comes) and this kind of reminded me of the Nothing in Neverending story, you don’t get that kind of bleak commentary in your kid films that often.
Ira and Judith during the whole sarcasm laugh scene with Max, was Ira trying to screw Judith? He was behind her and kept brushing up against her and she kept on saying “ow, don’t touch me”… that was odd, and it repeats itself to make even more of a point of it. I loved how they don’t filter or sugarcoat anything, it grapples with all the big stuff that a kid may experience on the periphery of his attempt to have fun. The adult world that is filtered into the fantasy world is not by way of Miley Cyrus but rather by way of a divorce and all the brute realities that offers up a kid stuck in the middle.
Roger Ebert – “It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it.”
Maybe this is where some of the divide comes from. While some of you may not agree with my opinion that the message is hopeless (even though I’ve seen plenty of positive reviews that say the same thing), for the most part it seems we all generally agree what its about and what the devices are. It seems the real divide is how it is about it, how those devices are used and how often.
Yeah I guess we all agree for the most part. I really take issue with those who say it’s not really a kids movie though.
And I think a lot of people do miss that the Wild Things are at least as much a reflection of the world of adults as the world of children.
Whether or not its still a kids film, I still wouldn’t encourage most people to take their kids to it, simply on a pragmatic level for the adult watching it. Every kid at my screening was taken out by their parents. Every one. Like Watership Down or Grave of the Fireflies or some other films, I’d say unless you’ve got cash to burn or extremely trust your kids’ discernment, see it for yourself first and then if you want to rewatch or think they can handle it, then take em.
Rusty, you’re right about the monsters being reflections of the adult world. That’s sort of what I was trying to get at in that Max recreates personalities and situations from his real world (which is largely a world of adults and semiadults – we don’t see him at all with any children his own age). It reminded me a little of Pan’s Labyrinth in that – he creates a world to escape to that’s something like the one he knows, but that gives him a more important role.
And your statement about the meandering nature of the Wild Things world is exactly what I felt too. I simply didn’t care if it didn’t have a strong narrative or if it was repetitive, because I loved being in it so much, and I loved the freedom of it. I didn’t realize that Dave Eggars was a screenwriter on it before I saw his credit at the end, but Mike, seeing this may help me appreciate Away We Go more when I rewatch it.
Mike, I certainly don’t think Carol is a direct analogue to Max – no one’s a direct analogue to anything. (Previous sentence edited because I realized I was speaking for Rusty and others, and I don’t mean to.) They all contain aspects of everyone, some more so than others. I think Carol is more of an analogue to Max than anyone else, and KW is more of an analogue to Max’s mother than anyone else, but the reason the film works so well is that the mirror is blurred and there’s no direct correlation that can be followed throughout. I too found this meditative and existential, so I can see where you’re coming from with that.
And Goon, I’m sorry if I was condescending – I know the litcrit comment was condescending, and I still think arguing for the literary device Jonze is using is not anything at all like arguing for Transformers. But I didn’t mean to disparage your disappointment or boredom with the film. I was defending my experience of the film against the suggestion that somehow being transported by and loving the film betrayed a lack of critical faculty. You clearly didn’t experience the same thing, and that’s okay.
@ Every kid at my screening was taken out by their parents.
Disgusting. This is a new fangled idea that our society has recently invented, that children should be sheltered from real emotions, protected by phony bullshit and product placement. Only a depraved society would come up with this.
I saw this on Sunday afternoon. The theater was filled with kids of all ages. They were pretty loud for the most part, constantly asking their parents questions about what’s going on. But they were immersed in the film. They were curious about what was going on. The kid sitting next to me teared up during the final. They thought the dirt fight was hilarious.
Historically childrens films weren’t afraid to scare their audience or have real emotion. Bambi of course, pinochoi, Never Ending Story as Rot pointed out (we watched that one every year at my school and the quick sand scene made everyone cry). I think films like this are important milestones for young people.
If Lion King were made today Mufasa would come back at the end and sing Chumbawumba with Simba.
I think anytime a film comes from a place of personal emotion it’s inevitably going to alienate a large portion of the audience. Broad, hamfisted phony balony emotion never alienates anyone.
@ Mike, I’m not sure anyone’s saying Carol is a direct analogue to Max – no one’s a direct analogue to anything.
absolutely. Metaphors in film work best when they’re not 1:1 analogies. WTWTA does this beautifully.
I don’t particularly like or care about what kids think, but if I were a parent I wouldn’t try to enforce a taste on the kid. There’s education and avoiding sheltering, and then there’s creepy “I will shape you dammit!” parenting.
If a kid is clearly bored and causing a fuss in their seat, its a courtesy to the rest of the audience to get them the fuck out of there. I also don’t get how a parent can sit and continue to enjoy a film if the kid is bothering others or having a terrible time.
If its an important or good looking release, I’ll hit the multiplex theater with the big screens and great sound. When its a theater rewatch or something so-so or that doesnt need the big screen experience, like say, The Invention of Lying, I hit the cheapo cinema…
That cinema has several staples to any screening. One is old people who tsk and talk about how shameful what they’re watching is (Man, that was entertaining during the Inglourious Basterds rewatch.) The other is the shitty parents who let their kids scream, yell, talk during everything, run up and down the aisles. Kurt, I’m talking about the Film.ca theateres, the Oakville one thats on Speers where Bruxy Cavey’s church used to be.
I’d say the majority of kids who dont like Wild Things are missing most of the adult subtexts. But I’d say most of the kids who do like it are probably also missing the subtexts and just like the hairy monsters, the same way when I was a kid I was certain that Hot To Trot was amazing. Sorry but there’s a very small percentage of kids I’d give credit for being able to ‘get’ what the movie is trying to do.
“I think anytime a film comes from a place of personal emotion it’s inevitably going to alienate a large portion of the audience. Broad, hamfisted phony balony emotion never alienates anyone.”
I almost wrote “well put” but I remembered that Crash and Gran Torino exist. I get what you’re going for though.
@ Man, that was entertaining during the Inglourious Basterds rewatch
ha ha. I had those people too. “oh my… and it was so violent!” [old lady scowl].
Anyway Corey, I’m glad IB worked out for you. It is a terrific film.
And I think parents should encourage their kids to watch good films and find things that stimulate their imaginations.
But my point was that kids do like things like Wild Things, Never Ending Story, and Bambi. It is adults who are uncomfortable with these things as childrens entertainment.
There’s no reason a kid has to get everything that’s going on in WTWTA for it to be worth taking them. I agree with you about kids that are being disruptive – it’s a courtesy to them and the other moviegoers to take them out then. But the ones who enjoy it on a superficial adventure/monster level will only appreciate it more when they grow up. I loved Mary Poppins when I was a kid because I liked the magic and the music. When I grew up and realized it was about parent-child relationships, it was like a whole new layer opened up for a film that I’d always loved. Ditto The Wizard of Oz, ditto Bambi, ditto Lassie Come Home, ditto basically every great family film. Most kids movies these days are ONLY for kids, and have nothing to offer them as they grow. That’s what makes films like WTWTA and the Pixar films so special. I wouldn’t take young children to WTWTA because the pacing will likely bore them, but if they’re able to sit through it, I’d say do it. There’s far too much spoon-fed kid entertainment these days.
how much must it suck to be the director of Paranormal Activity, where your movie is made for 15 grand, takes 2 years to be widely released, then makes over 20 million in its opening weekend, which is extremely impressive in October, only to be completely overshadowed by another film? That dude has one of the biggest success stories of the year and little to no fanfare.
I dunno, I think he’s doing okay. Paranormal Activity has been trending on Twitter for days, and it’s still in the top ten trending topics. Where the Wild Things Are has already fallen off.
I’m just too scared to go see it, so I’m talking about WTWTA instead.
@ how much must it suck to be the director of Paranormal Activity
well… that dude’s probably feeling pretty good right now. He’s pretty much living the world’s biggest “I told ya so.”
“I’m just too scared to go see it”
Yeah I’ve pussed out too, I wont see it alone. I mean the ending of REC actually scared the shit out of me when watched that home alone. In the middle of the final scene I had to turn it off, take a breather, and then come back. That almost never happens to me, but its exactly why I usually dont go out of my way to go get scared. I don’t believe in ghosts but they probably freak me out more than anything else supernatural too, so…
My gf on the other hand can take just about anything but “Greys” style aliens. She’ll run in terror. Has never seen Close Encounters and probably never will.
Goon, I still haven’t watched [REC] either. I kind of want to. You’re scaring me now, though. But so many of my friends keep saying I ought to see it.
@Jandy,
This was written by Jonze and Eggers, and while there were some clear Eggers aspects to the storytelling, it felt on the whole less of an Eggers story, perhaps Jonze played a stronger part than one would expect. Eggers has a book out called Wild Things, I guess after reading that I would have a better grasp of whether what was onscreen was his story. I would suspect the ambiguity, the not wanting to tie the story up perfectly with clear analogues, having these caveats throughout, that is very much Eggers’ approach.
every time someone writes Eggers all I can think of is this:
http://edgarsuit.ytmnd.com/
@Goon, “I don’t particularly like or care about what kids think, but if I were a parent I wouldn’t try to enforce a taste on the kid. There’s education and avoiding sheltering, and then there’s creepy “I will shape you dammit!” parenting.”
I’m with you, even if I occasionally fall into the latter category. The challenge is not to just let the kids do the ‘easy – everything handed to you’ choice all the time, and go for the ‘challenging, you have to work a bit more to get this choice’ I simply try to convince them to stay to the end of film, or look away if something is bothering you, to hold that question for an extra 15 seconds to see if it is answered.
This has failed a couple times (Zarthura, the first time on Princess Mononoke and Kikirou the Sorceress) but in the case of Mononoke, it rapidly became one of their first choices after some of the scarier elements are processed.
It is in my experience that “NEW” is often a bigger stumbling point than “Scary” or “Complex” and that is why kids will watch the same movie over and over and over again. The trick of the parent is to help kids embrace things outside of their ‘safe’ or limited choices (“lets just watch Cars again”) and broaden horizons.
Much like myself with musical albums, I try not to judge CDs until I’ve listened to them a couple times, usually 3 in their entirety.
Most ‘great’ examples of art and culture require a little work/background/effort to understand how to process them and get the most (any ‘connoisseur’ field: Jazz, Wine Tasting, Shakespeare, classical dance etc.) Again, much of the role of parents to is expose their children to these rather than to simply cater to their whims or ‘shield’ them.
My rambling take on this, anyway.
It’s too bad that Drew McWeeny’s AICN pedigree scares people off because he really is one of the best voices in film criticism.
I reached a certain scene in the film, I wasn’t prepared. Judith (voiced by Catherine O’Hara) is one of the most dour of the Wild Things, and she never quite warms up to Max. He can sense it, too, and at one point, she gets sarcastic with him. He begins to mock her, saying everything back in a snide sing-song voice. Frustrated, Judith growls at him, and he growls back, showing just as much tooth as she does. She yells at him, her frustration growing, and he yells back, and Judith recoils, shocked and angry at his display. “No!,” she yells. “You don’t get to yell back at me! You don’t get to be angry back at me! You have to just listen and love me anyway, because that’s your job!” And while my children could never articulate that thought to me, seeing it played out in this one moment destroyed me.
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/2008-12-6-motion-captured/posts/the-m-c-review-where-the-wild-things-are-roars-and-rumbles
I wasn’t aware that C. Kaufman had input on the script and C. Burwell on the score.
that to me was one of the most unsettling moments of the film… that is the same scene that Judith’s partner is potentially groping her.
I also really like the boat send-off scene.
What’s interesting is that I read the scene as Judith being the adult and max being the boy, her telling him he’s not allowed to yell at her.
But McWeeny turns it around completely, saying that Judith is expressing child like betrayal at being yelled at by the parent who is supposed to love her unconditionally.
It’s an astonishingly complex film.
Wait, what happens at the end? I walked out of this shit halfway through.
Oh, never mind.. I don’t give a fuck.
^^^^^ lame post.
even at my deepest point of rejection i was nowhere near walking out. weird.
It’s true what people are saying about this movie being for adults; more specifically, it will be easier to sit through this movie if you are an adult who has consumed large amounts of alcohol before entering the theater
http://www.cinematical.com/2009/10/30/where-the-dirty-hipsters-are-spoofs-wild-things/
I think the movie achieved the message of the book quite well. For me the books taught children not only about the power of imagination, but about sadness and seperation. I think that the writers took from a very abstract book and decided to develop the characters beyond (obviously) what the book represented them as. It brought out different emotions, whether that be anger or confusion or sadness, thats obviously subjective to the individual; but for me as long as a film brings out different emotions and evokes a response (as much as this film did for me) it did its job, and did it well. I think this film is a classic that i would defintily have in my movie collection for my kids (which do not exist).
I think whenever a major motion picture is created from an aspect of a person’s childhood (especially pertaining to books) people get very defensive and create expectations which the film has to live up too. For myself, movies 9 times out of 10 never live up to the expectations i hold them up too, so its hard to believe that this movie did actually go beyond my expectations.
I think what people most have a problem with this film, is that it didnt live up to their own personal imaginations of Max and the land he lived in. This film is just the writers projection of the book and what they imagined Max’s experience as. Although my childhood imaginations from this book were different from a film, i think it has brought valuable lessons of sadness, betrayal, friendship, jealousy, mistrust, etc.
Basically, its a great movie
I agree with Goon. It’s a terrible movie. Good on you for sticking to your guns.
This is the reason I feel it falls short.
It’s a primer on emotional and physical abuse.
It really is. Take it from someone who has been there.
It’s pretty, sure, but so what? It’s got no character development, a bare veneer of plot, bad dialogue, one-dimensional characters, I could go on.
The whole time I was just praying for it to end. I ended up walking out with my boyfriend, who was similarly disturbed by this extremely violent movie. I want to make clear that I am not about sheltering kids from real emotions and psychology. For me, this movie went off the deep end with gratuitous emotional and physical violence, and nobody needs to be exposed to that. There’s enough of that in real life.