I’ll Eat You Up!
Yells the nine-year-old Max (newcomer Max Records) to his mother (Catherine Keener) in the feature film adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book. That book had a measly ten sentences but plenty of good drawings. Director Spike Jonze has faithfully incorporated everything he could and like all great adaptors, has added on an incredible amount of depth, emotion, and cinematic scope.
Max is a rambunctious little kid with the normal inclinations of a nine year old. By that I mean he’s impulsive, impotent, and often times stupid. (Too harsh? well imagine what you would think of Max's actions if he was forty.) In the first fifteen minutes, he tears up his sister’s room in revenge of a perceived slight; he rudely yells at his mother in the middle of her date, and he runs away from home in a fury. Then, like in the book, Max gets on a boat and sails to a far away island: the Land of the Wild Things. The Wild Things are a godless lot of beasties who have the emotional maturity of nine year olds. Max finds them in a familial crisis and arrogantly suggests that he can fix everything and keep the sadness away in the Wild Thing Kingdom. He even lies about having special powers like a sadness shield. The Wild Things crown Max as their king and Max declares the “wild rumpus to start!”
Jonze never expressly says anything but the Wild Things can be metaphorical on many levels. I took their current problem (One member has been spending more time with other things on the island) to mean any kind of familial strife. In this story it could pertain to Max’s sister abandoning him to play by himself, or it could refer to the divorce in Max’s family (He gets mad at his mother in the beginning because she has brought home Mark Ruffalo, a man who isn’t Max’s father). When the Wild Things entrust Max with the job of fixing everything, it is sort of like parents entrusting their own kid to fix their marriage. This is a job Max zealously accepts because he feels he knows best anyway. What makes this movie special is that the Wild Things take Max’s ideas seriously, carry them out, and expect them to work. And unlike any children’s movies I’ve ever seen, Max’s ideas are those a nine year old would come up with. What makes this movie especially sad is that they have the exact results they should have.
For example, Max’s first idea is to build an awesome fort. The Wild Things eagerly start working on it. They build the best fort ever, just the sight of it is something to behold. But it doesn’t work in uniting the Wild Things family. All the same problems continue. Next Max comes up with the idea of having a giant dirt clod fight. It’s a great fight, but as what happens with all fights, people get hurt and the same problems become even worse. Eventually the Wild Things become disillusioned and angry with Max. They blame all their problems on him. There is an especially sad scene where they ask Max if he has any powers at all. Max gets up and does a robot dance (this dance was seen earlier when he tried to cheer up his mom after she had gotten bad news at work). It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. None of the Wild Things are impressed. This is the closest I’ve seen a movie get to portraying the helplessness a child must feel when their family is breaking up. Max knows something is wrong but can’t do anything about it because he’s only nine and all he is good at is building forts.
The movie takes a dark turn near the end when the Wild Things, who are known to eat things up, turn on Max. This is probably the few scenes that left the children in the test audiences screaming and gave the producers enormous fits. Is it scary? You bet. Is this movie okay for children to watch? Let's just say I would take my kid to see it the day he turned nine. A movie isn’t great that doesn’t provoke its audience. What makes some movies better than others is how it does so. There are scary beasties in this movie, but they are handled responsibly. I doubt many kids will get nightmares. More likely they will get ideas for Halloween.
This movie has guts. It is perhaps the only kid’s movie I’ve ever seen that deals with childhood guilt. Most other movies won’t even dare of suggesting that a kid could be culpable of something. But in this one, Max wrongs people. It is true that kids can be cruel, but often times they are cruel on accident. They don’t know any better. When a child does something bad impulsively and then learns the evil in the actions the emotional consequences may cover a vast arc from fear, injustice, anger, doubt, realization, guilt, sadness, fear of reprimand, and finally fear of loss of love. The depth of this movie is very rare indeed.
This is not just a story about a kid tromping around in fantasy land realizing cliche life lessons. The problems in this movie can't be solved by a bake sale or science fair experiment prize money. Like problems in real life, they can't be solved at all by a nine year old. That's precisely what every other kid's movie gets completely wrong. They all sidestep the fact that being a kid is a helpless, impotent existence. This movie understands that perfectly. And although it is a complete fantasy it still feels more real than any other movie that has ever been concerned with the nature of being a stupid little kid. The movie ends after Max exhausts all of his rebelliousness on the island with a version of the book’s classic scene of atonement. Max returns home and is greeted by his worried mom with a hug, forgiveness, and his dinner still hot. Perfect.
There are some reviews I’ve read that call this movie dull in parts. I can understand that, but one should also keep in mind this: Max is just a kid. What may seem trivial to adults can mean a whole lot to a nine year old. Since this movie refuses to cater to an adult viewpoint and keeps everything at a child’s level, enjoying it is sometimes a test of empathy. Surely most adults have grown up past the age where forts are exciting, but imagine Max’s wonder as he explores his. Or imagine a kid’s comfort and security of sleeping in a big pile of Wild Things. Or simply the coolness of being able to play dirt clods with big people on an equal level at that age. I got a great kick out of all of it.
This is Max Records first movie. This is an incredible performance that is sort of akin to Tom Hanks’ performance in Castaway. Max is in every frame of the movie and he spent most of the time on the set acting with inanimate objects. Keep in mind the facial expressions and voices of the Wild Things were added in later. He carries the entire film. Max, the actor, is especially good at communicating subtle emotion through facial expressions. (Think the opposite of Macauley Culkin) Just consider his expression when a teacher tells him the sun is going to die someday or the look on his face when he sees his mother with Mark Ruffalo. This is the best child performance since Haley Joel Osment’s in “The Sixth Sense.” Like Haley, Max Records deserves a nomination for Best Actor.
If I am being honest I will have to admit that this movie moved me to the point where my eyes watered. Yes technically I cried during this movie. It doesn’t happen often. (The last time was while watching “The Sixth Sense.”) But when it does it is imperative to admit it and reflect upon it because it suggests that the movie (though obviously fictitious and in this case not even attempting to be in the realms of reality) struck a nerve by portraying something I felt was not only emotionally raw and enormously empathetic, but above all, true. In this movie there is truth. It deserves nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and especially best Costumes or Makeup depending on whatever the Wild Things qualify as. I don’t believe that Where the Wild Things Are is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. It is the best movie I’ve seen this year. and I believe it is a movie that will last for years to come much like the book it was adapted from.
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