In a fantasy world created by his imagination, child Max strolls through a vast desert with a monstrous companion. Max looks worried. “Did you know,” he asks, “that the Sun was going to die?”
As a child I found myself preoccupied with the mortality of the Sun. I knew it wasn’t going to happen for a good long while, but the very fact that it would eventually happen suggested that the world I knew was fundamentally unstable, and that deeply bothered me. I found that much of Where the Wild Things Are captured the often secret joys and anxieties of childhood that were very familiar to me. Spike Jones’s film shows the story of a boy who is learning that his world lies un deeply unsteady foundations – that the people he loves will not always return his affections, unpredictable and sometimes menacing forces much greater than him are at work in every facet of his life, just as the monstrous Wild Things determine his fate in fantasy.
Maurice Sendak’s picture-book Where the Wild Things Are enthralled me as a child. It was the beautiful landscapes that really struck me: the vast sea and the far-away jungle of the mind. But there was also a hint of savegery that puzzled me and drew my attention then. The wild things were, after all, wild – and a bit menacing. Spike Jonze’s new film develops the savagery of the wild things much further. I must confess that as a film Where the Wild Things Are scared me silly, though I’m supposed to be an adult now. And I was teary through much of it.
When the Wild Things threaten to eat Max in this film, they are clearly not joking. Max even stumbles across a disturbing pile of bones that indicates such. Yet there is plenty of affection. All the Wild Things, in fact, seem desperate to love and be loved. But sometimes in trying to express their love they hurt each other; rowdy play or a friendly joke can cause unexpected harm. And when the Wild Things feel threatened or unloved, they are prone to fits of rage and violence. Their outbursts may seem extreme, but I think to a child the emotional outbursts of an adult can seem just as wild. The whole film, in fact, is an extremely authentic portrait of life painted from the view of a child. And it’s the only film I’ve ever seen that comes close to expressing what it was like for me to grow up.
