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Review: Where the Wild Things Are
Dec. 6th, 2009 09:58 pmI’ll admit, it’s been a while since I read the children’s book, but I remember it as being rather sombre but fun. The movie manages to be both depressing and loud. Not… not entirely what I was expecting.
Problems: Well, you’ve got the extended opening sequence in the real world. The problem here is that Max struck me as very unlikable and never gained my sympathy. I’m not criticising the actor who does a very good job – but the character, as portrayed on screen, is constantly either sulking or angry, generally for little or no reason. He’s furious when his sister’s friends destroy the igloo he’s built out of snow. Fair enough – except they didn’t destroy it out of spite, it was destroyed as collateral damage in a snowball fight he started, a snowball fight they happily joined in.
Now in the picture book, Max is sent to his bedroom as punishment, where he creates the land of the Wild Things out of his imagination. Here… here he runs away from home after his demanding “Feed me, woman!” and biting his mother (!) fail to get him the attention he feels he deserves, where he eventually stumbles across a boat that takes him to the Wild Thing’s land. The whole sequence leading up to the boat is where my tolerance of Max snapped; he comes across as completely out of control, violent, and possibly in need of actual psychological help.
To be fair, he’s a lot more likable once we actually get to the Wild Things, though he never really gains my sympathy. The Wild Things themselves – well, they look great, they sound and move fine, and their whole story starts off at ‘melancholy’ and then detours towards ‘utterly depressing’. See, the film at this point seems to be trying to address the trauma of growing up, of leaving the illusions of childhood behind. Max meets the Wild Things, talks his way into making him their king, and promises to solve their problems, create a world where nothing will go wrong and everyone will be happy forever.
And he fails miserably, is forced to admit he’s not a king, not an explorer, just a little kid, and eventually sails away. The best one can say for his attempts to make the Wild Things happy is that he tried. Now, alright, it’s all very well to have him grow into maturity, develop some level of empathy and recognise there’s no magic power he can use to make everything the way he wants it – but, damn, couldn’t we get at least some glimmer of hope here? In the end, we’re watching as a group of Wild Things stand on the shore, no happier than they were at the start of the film, mournfully making calls of goodbye as their ‘king’ leaves them, presumably never to return.
Part of the problem, I think, is that the film seems unclear what the Wild Things represent. Are they aspects of Max’s own personality, or are they his perception of the people in his life? The film seems to go back and forth, and never seems to reach a conclusion despite some ham-handedly obvious echoing of scenes from the ‘real world’ section of the film. Either way, they seem to be lacking the raw imaginative power of the Things the book’s Max conjures up; they seem too much representative of forces outside of Max’s control for his leaving them to really work – he’s not turning his back on his fantasy of power and unrestrained freedom to return to his home and mother, he’s abandoning lost souls after having demonstrated he has no power to help or comfort others.
It’s a clever film, and I think a great deal of it works well – but in the end, it seems to have no soul, and there’s no joy to be found among the Wild Things.
Problems: Well, you’ve got the extended opening sequence in the real world. The problem here is that Max struck me as very unlikable and never gained my sympathy. I’m not criticising the actor who does a very good job – but the character, as portrayed on screen, is constantly either sulking or angry, generally for little or no reason. He’s furious when his sister’s friends destroy the igloo he’s built out of snow. Fair enough – except they didn’t destroy it out of spite, it was destroyed as collateral damage in a snowball fight he started, a snowball fight they happily joined in.
Now in the picture book, Max is sent to his bedroom as punishment, where he creates the land of the Wild Things out of his imagination. Here… here he runs away from home after his demanding “Feed me, woman!” and biting his mother (!) fail to get him the attention he feels he deserves, where he eventually stumbles across a boat that takes him to the Wild Thing’s land. The whole sequence leading up to the boat is where my tolerance of Max snapped; he comes across as completely out of control, violent, and possibly in need of actual psychological help.
To be fair, he’s a lot more likable once we actually get to the Wild Things, though he never really gains my sympathy. The Wild Things themselves – well, they look great, they sound and move fine, and their whole story starts off at ‘melancholy’ and then detours towards ‘utterly depressing’. See, the film at this point seems to be trying to address the trauma of growing up, of leaving the illusions of childhood behind. Max meets the Wild Things, talks his way into making him their king, and promises to solve their problems, create a world where nothing will go wrong and everyone will be happy forever.
And he fails miserably, is forced to admit he’s not a king, not an explorer, just a little kid, and eventually sails away. The best one can say for his attempts to make the Wild Things happy is that he tried. Now, alright, it’s all very well to have him grow into maturity, develop some level of empathy and recognise there’s no magic power he can use to make everything the way he wants it – but, damn, couldn’t we get at least some glimmer of hope here? In the end, we’re watching as a group of Wild Things stand on the shore, no happier than they were at the start of the film, mournfully making calls of goodbye as their ‘king’ leaves them, presumably never to return.
Part of the problem, I think, is that the film seems unclear what the Wild Things represent. Are they aspects of Max’s own personality, or are they his perception of the people in his life? The film seems to go back and forth, and never seems to reach a conclusion despite some ham-handedly obvious echoing of scenes from the ‘real world’ section of the film. Either way, they seem to be lacking the raw imaginative power of the Things the book’s Max conjures up; they seem too much representative of forces outside of Max’s control for his leaving them to really work – he’s not turning his back on his fantasy of power and unrestrained freedom to return to his home and mother, he’s abandoning lost souls after having demonstrated he has no power to help or comfort others.
It’s a clever film, and I think a great deal of it works well – but in the end, it seems to have no soul, and there’s no joy to be found among the Wild Things.
