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Where the wild things are movie3/4/2023 ![]() Elliot and Charlie show up in mature, tempered ways and wield their wit to defy challenging forces that threaten the ones they love. Elliot is rendered admirable because his capacity for care triumphs over the conquest of the American government and helps an alien return home. In contrast to Max, precocious storybook children like Charlie Bucket or E.T’s selfless Elliot Thompson (Henry Thomas) are often beloved because they are not considered “problem children.” Rather than causing havoc, making messes and reacting to his circumstances in loud ways that are inconvenient to the adults in his life, Charlie is obedient, polite. He only wanted to participate, after all. ![]() After his anger has subsided, Max looks at the snow melt on the carpet and the trinket he has destroyed, and is ashamed of himself. But when an older boy stomps all over that igloo-Max’s makeshift, lonesome home-Max cries angrily, retreats to Claire’s room and destroys a heart-shaped ornament he made for her. As snow is hurled over the divide, Claire and her friends more literally breach the fence, running towards a laughing, joyous Max who retreats back to his igloo. For a moment that craving for intimacy seems within his grasp when Claire’s friends have a spontaneous snowball fight with Max from the other side of a fence. He hungers for an invitation to participate with them and even invites his sister to witness his “masterpiece.” All to no avail. In Where the Wild Things Are’s first act, Max builds an igloo alone on a snowy day and watches his teenage sister play with her friends. As the beloved Arcade Fire-scored trailer says, “Inside all of us is a wild thing.” Jonze’s and Dave Eggers’ script centralizes childhood vulnerability and anxiety to ultimately explore the worthiness of all children to be accepted and known. But beyond the hallowed legacy of the story, the transcendent element of Jonze’s 2009 film stems from the dignity Max is granted and the space he is given to emote his frustrations and have those feelings honored. There is a reason that Where the Wild Things Are has spurred various adaptations and recorded readings (by incredible Christopher Walken impersonators and more) since its original release. The beauty of Jonze’s film partially comes from the strength of Sendak’s original story. He is unable here, just as he was at home, to disappear the emotional discomforts that inevitably accompany being alive. But of course Max is unable to conjure this utopia and to extract every hurt from the place of the wild things. He assures them that their shared place will be the kind of place where there isn’t any sadness and where “only the things you want to have happen will happen.” What Max essentially promises himself and his new chosen family is that he can manifest the reliable sense of belonging, safety and understanding he yearned for in the home he fled. In return, Max promises to unite all of the wild things. ![]() But after Max performs his magic trick (dancing), the wild things reevaluate and make Max their king. When Max first lands on the shores, the wild things threaten to gnash their terrible teeth and eat him. One night, after biting his mother and being sent to bed without dinner, Max runs away from home and finds himself sailing away to an island where he befriends the wild things: Carol (James Gandolfini), Douglas (Chris Cooper), Judith (Catherine O’Hara), KW (Lauren Ambrose), Ira (Forest Whitaker), Alexander (Paul Dano) and The Bull (Michael Berry Jr.). This results in him lashing out at home, stomping about in his eggshell-colored animal suit and destroying things around the house. Max (Max Records), a young boy who yearns to connect to his mother Connie (Catherine Keener) and sister Claire (Pepita Emmerichs), has a depth of emotion-volcanic anger, intermittent confusion and specks of shame-but none of the language to communicate any of it. It is a film that does not pander to children, but rather has compassion for the fact that kids have not consented to being alive and are trying to understand what it means to be a fully actualized person. Spike Jonze’s 2009 adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s 1963 children’s book Where the Wild Things Are masterfully encapsulates this combination of discomfort and wondrous discovery that courses through the beginning of this proverbial party that is childhood. And because you are the nascent living thing in the room, you are still learning. And to navigate the party you must lean upon the wisdom of people who arrived before you, because they usually now know which cupboards the drinking glasses are in and how to dance and how to express the thoughts that live in their minds. While at the party you are learning what a party is-what the verbal patterns and social rhythms are. Being a kid is kind of like living at a party you did not ask to be invited to.
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