A beautiful adaptation of the classic children’s book, Where The Wild Things Are follows the journey of a young boy named Max who feels out of place in the world. His sister is too busy with her friends to see his igloo creation. His mother is too busy on the phone to join in on his games. He feels alone.
That is until he enters the fantasy land where the wild things are – a world inside his head where he tries to make sense of the older figures in his life. The creatures there are angry, lonely and sad with no structure to their lives, and they need a king. And so Max becomes one.
Where the Wild Things Are isn’t what you expect it to be. Whilst it’s rated PG, I wouldn’t say it’s a kids film. It’s dark, laced with complex metaphors, and touches on a lot of deeper issues within Max’s life which would be overwhelming for any young audience member. But for an adult to watch, it’s refreshing to see the kid’s perspective. Max represents the misunderstood child who is trying to make sense of the world he lives in, who is often overlooked and pushed aside when adult problems surface.
Film Analysis
There are many moments in this film that can be unravelled like tape, especially since the monsters Max meets are representative of the people and struggles in his life. I found this film so interesting and inspiring that I can’t help but type out my thoughts on moments that really resonated with me or got me thinking about the world in a different way.
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
Max’s Family Dynamics
I think one of the most important pairs of characters in the film are Max and KW. I believe KW represents Max’s mother, and their interactions in the fantasy land of the monsters represents Max’s struggles to see eye to eye with his mother’s decisions and actions in his life.
There is a scene where KW has left for a while to spend time with Bob and Terry the owls (paralleling the way Max’s Mum leaves Max to spend time with friends), but has returned with them in tow.
Max asks: How do I make everyone okay?
A heart-breaking question with an equally heart-breaking response. Bob and Terry respond in squawks, since they are merely owls, and KW laughs in recognition. But Max can’t understand. The squawks of “adult language” distance Max from the true picture. He is reduced to the role of a passive child in a world where he feels very deeply the effects of adult life – that which he sees but does not quite understand and isn’t allowed to understand.
NW tells Max that Bob and Terry can come live with us too.
Max asks: What about Carol?
It is evident from the start that Carol is Max’s inner monster – the turmoil inside of him that feels isolated from the rest of the other monsters, who doesn’t understand why they do what they do, who feels angry and hurt and better when Max is around to take care of him (to acknowledge his own mental state) but not when Max fights him.
So, when Max asks about Carol he is in fact asking about himself. NW says she can like Bob and Terry whilst still liking Max, much like Max’s mother can spend time with her friends and Max too, but in reality, this doesn’t do much to comfort Max. There is no exclusivity to love and yet Max feels like an afterthought to Bob and Terry (to his Mum’s friends), as if he has been abandoned for another pursuit.
It is a particularly haunting reflection on the role of a child within complicated family dynamics and I loved how it was scripted and filmed with these soft moments of sensitivity that can quite easily be missed yet stop you enough to question its role in the wider picture.
The Monster Pile (And Dying Sun)
Another moment that particularly struck me was the monster pile that Max finds himself stuck within. Whilst it parallels Max getting stuck in the igloo at the start, this time he isn’t crying of fear but feeling comfort in those around him. Later on, when Carol’s anger is bubbling to the surface, Max becomes scared of Carol – of his own emotions – and attempts to create a secret room to shut out the parts of himself he doesn’t want to face. Some really beautiful yet painful words are spoken.
Carol says: I thought we were all going to sleep in a big pile but now you want a secret room and the sun is going to die.
This is arguably one of my favourite quotes from the film. It touches on the idea that has been laced throughout the film – that the sun will no longer be there someday, that the concept of hope and happiness and warmth in the distance will one day fizzle out. And this is finally tied into the role of the big pile – this family unit that keeps Max feeling whole, like he’s part of something, but that eventually is sectioned off into empty rooms and individual lives, much like Max feels is happening in his own life back at home. He feels himself drifting from his family and locking himself away in a secret room where he can only experience the wild emotions that dare to break down his walls. It is only when Carol speaks these words that we truly understand, as a viewer, that this is how Max has been feeling all along.
The Meaning of Max As A King
I think the role of the King is also particularly interesting and relevant to Max’s inner journey. Max takes on this role within the monsters’ lives from the very beginning in an attempt to formulate control. Whether this was intentional or not, this reminded me a lot of the globe in Max’s room at the start, where his Dad had written something about being the owner of the world. Like many kids, Max grows up with this quiet confidence that he can rule his own world, that he can achieve his dreams, but as he finds himself caught between the messiness of the adults in his life he realises being a King is, in many senses, meaningless. He doesn’t always have the control that he wants. And sometimes there is nothing he can do about it.
When Carol loses this desired control and his anger rises, there is a moment between Max and KW that I think is a beautiful parallelism to Max and his mother. Filmed and acted with a deep sense of care and sensitivity, the words that Max and his mother have been feeling but never said are finally spoken aloud.
Max: He doesn’t mean to be that way KW… he’s just scared.
KW: He just makes it hard. And it’s hard enough already.
Max: But he loves you. You’re his family.
KW: Yeah… it’s hard being a family.
And as the final scene of the film is shot, when Max’s mother embraces him, we have these words in the back of our minds as a viewer. There is nothing needed but their expressions and the words that are still hovering over their heads from the monster land. A subdued acceptance that things may not always be okay but they’re okay.
Where the Wild Things Are is truly a unique film in a myriad of different ways – so many opportunities to sit and reflect and analyse, if you enjoy diving as deep into the meaning as I do. It’s complex, and I think perhaps that can be off-putting for a lot of people, but it was truly amazing how the fantasy land of the monsters became such a real and raw representation of real life.
Overall, this film is entirely what you make of it. The deeper you dive into the parallels between the monsters and the people in Max’s life, the more you understand how his psyche is explained through the many interactions he has in the strange and wonderful world where the wild things are. It’s reflective, all-consuming and if you let it, makes you think. And the monsters are universal. Max finds his way back home, like we all do, when those wild things let loose inside. And he is free.
Have you watched Where The Wild Things Are?
Let me know what you thought of it in the comments below.
Spike Jonze has been known for some memorable pieces in his career (the best Weezer and Tenacious D videos, Jackass, Being John Malkovich and a Co-director on a film I have always wanted to review but haven't felt like I could give a worthy description of: The Fall). His 2009 film, based on my favorite children's book of all time "Where the Wild Things Are" aims to please a range of viewers. On the one hand you have a children's classic, with lovable characters of make-believe fabricated in the main character's mind (Max). On the other hand, each character, as the adult viewer catches onto throughout the film, represents a different manifestation of Max's emotions that he is feeling on the surface. My mom used to read the book to me at bedtime and I recall such vivid images of Max's bedroom page by page slowly turning into a new world, the far-off land of the wild things, and those creatures with their yellowy eyes. It was oddly scary and comforting at the same time to hear that story each night. That's probably why I was curious to see what director Spike Jonze would do with the big screen adaptation.
A little background on the film, it was actually supposed to come out a year ago, but in a test screening to a children audience, there were children leaving the theater in tears after being scared of the monsters. The film still does contain dark themes (hints of cannibalism, and witchcraft for example) however the faces of each beast were reanimated with CGI, as per studio's request to appeal to a wider audience inclusive of children. The film also was directed using natural lighting, which is a remarkable achievement that seems to be common to Jonze's style. In fact many parts of the film reminded me of his Weezer video "Island in the Sun."
Max is a burdened child, not feeling anything extraordinary from most kids, but they are exceptional emotions to him with no one that seems to relate to what he is feeling around him. The film does an exceptional job of portraying the assumptions adolescents make from problems that everyone seems to grow out of, but shouldn't be seen as juvenile just because it is a child that experiences them. Often grownups (I think the film argues) downplay the emotions of a child just because they are just that, childish. However, the film strives to give a deeper meaning to the common experiences of what children go through. As one critic put it, "It's less ABOUT a kid and more about BEING a kid." For example, Max's school teacher describes what the end of the world would look like, starting with the death of the sun and the slow widdling away of life throughout the universe. Max, as a boy, cannot grasp any type of long-term vision around the fact and starts to become scared, assuming that the death of the sun will happen inevitably and soon. Max tries to find solace and companionship in his mother and sister, who cannot seem to relate or take the time to calm down his rash, immediate assertions. It is at this point that he runs away from it all and creates a world in his mind that he can call his own and build. Within this world he creates "wild things" that each represent a piece of his torn emotions. These emotions are vivid and obvious parallels that become fun to pick out and identify over the course of the film.
Now, Jonze decided to stray away from the book at this point. Of course you have to give him a little slack as some critics refuse to, I mean, the book is about 30 pages long with 2-4 lines per page, you have to stray a little bit. For example, the Max in the book is a garrulous young boy of about six years old. He is sent to his room without his supper. The Max of the movie is deeply disturbed and much older and he ends up running away from home. The problem here is not that Jonze decided to stray from the book, its that this straying created serious convolution of character and plot.
The characters become dealt with one at a time and introduced in the same manner. The main monster, Carol becomes the main character that Max speaks with. First of all, assigning very common, human names to the beasts gives it away that Max is tagging very human qualities to the manifestations of his imagination. Carol is the main monster that Max deals with, because he is the representation of the central emotion that Max is dealing with in real life. There could be nothing clearer to give this away then when Max first meets Carol he is wrecking and destroying pieces of his friend's houses, just as Max did in frustration with his sister's room earlier in the day. Carol is dealing with his best friend neglecting him for other friends, friends that Carol refuses to let into his life. This friend is KW who represents Max's sister in real life or the emotion of desired companionship. Carol finds himself neglected and lonely, above all he is constantly worried and
"The Things are potent symbols that refuse to yield to a single interpretation. Carol blends Max’s angry, destructive impulses and anxieties with Max’s mother’s concern and, dimly, the reassuring voice of the father who isn’t there. It’s not hard to see where Carol and KW’s quarrels come from, and KW’s absences are the flip side of Carol’s surrogate fatherhood, but Max’s sister is also in KW, off cavorting with her new friends and leaving Carol, and thus Max, in the lurch.
Among the most revelatory moments are an outburst from Judith (the rhino-nosed one, voiced by Catherine O’Hara), the harshest and most cynical of the Wild Things, following a taunting match with Max. "You’re not supposed to yell back at me!” she screams. “You have to just listen and love me anyway, because that’s your job!” It is his own voice, uttering his own unspoken plea to his mother. In another scene, Max flings at Carol the very words his mother yelled at him: “You’re out of control!”
The movie is full of wonderful visions, from the burying of Max beneath a heap of Things (perhaps the most sadness-shielding moment in the film) to Carol’s tabletop model-building and the large-scale fortress the Things set about building, both of which have a nest-like textured look that evokes Sendak’s crosshatching pen-and-ink work. Max Records is ideal as Max, one of the most unaffected child actor performances since E.T.
Like E.T., which explicitly referenced Peter Pan, Where the Wild Things Are is indebted to J. M. Barrie’s classic tale. The realm of the Wild Things is wondrous but unsettling and sad, and at one point Max tells KW, “I wish you all had a mother,” just as Neverland is a heartless place because there are no mothers there.
Watching the film, at times I wished for something closer to Sendak, something simpler and less talky, with more attention to the book's most striking images: not just the missing bedroom scene, but the sea-monster Thing that greets Max before he makes land; the Things swinging through the treetops like monkey bars during the Wild Rumpus; the sweater-striped Thing (Carol) bowing in courtly fashion to the newly crowned Max. Yet put the book aside and watch the film as a Thing unto itself, as a better cousin of Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal, or a Muppet-ier cousin of E.T., and I think it is something rather wonderful.
In a word, the great difference between Sendak’s book and Jonze’s film is that the book is about anger, while the film is as much about sadness. Here is a film broken-hearted over the messiness of the world. It is sad, and beautiful, and true."
In the end, Max realizes and comes the the conclusion that each monster (or emotion) can't survive without their mother (as he fulfilled the motherly role himself). Or in other words, every piece of our childhood needs to be nurtured, not tortured or run away from as Max did.
CONSENSUS:
Rotten Tomatoes give this move a 70% ratingZoom In Analysis will AGREE with this rating. Though the film provides a deeper insight into emotions that we strive to keep but our lack of innocence has detached ourselves from, it makes no effort to entertain the child inside of us. In other words, I think many of us went to the film expecting to feel like a child again, but instead we were put through a lesson on how to relate to them. Even though the studio made great effort to make it appeal more to kids, it is not wiping out the scary elements that they needed to focus on as it is the length of the film. 2 hours seemed a little too long for the kids in the theater with me, and even I was growing impatient. Through it still provided moments of nostalgia and provided plenty of elements of humor and aesthetics, the film cannot possibly be put in a category of excellence.