Out of Frame: Where the Wild Things Are
If you ever laughed uncontrollably while engaged in a childhood snowball fight, built intricate forts out of your grandmother's afghan blankets, or made up the rules to complex playground games while the game was still being played, then Spike Jonze's adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are is for you. Actually, even if you never did those things, but still have a strong nostalgic attachment to Maurice Sendak's classic picture book, the movie is still yours. What's less clear is whether it is geared toward children still engaged in all that creative play and discovering the book for the first time. Regrettably, I'm no longer eight and can't say for sure what a child's reaction to this movie might be. I suspect — or maybe, rather, hope — that kids will respond to it despite the fact that it isn’t paced or presented like most children’s movies, and will grow to love it more and more as they grow older.
Sendak's book is a deceptively simple exploration of the emotional and imaginative life of children, a simple ten sentence tale of a boy imagining an exotic world of his own while banished to his bedroom without supper. The bulk of this fantasy is taken up by wordless drawings of young Max, dressed in hooded wolf pajamas, engaging in a wild rumpus with a gang of odd animal hybrid monsters who are convinced that he is their king. Jonze and his co-writer, the novelist Dave Eggers, treat the scarcity of narrative as an opportunity to create a work that is both true to the spirit of the source material while something entirely original.
Max's monsters, in literary form simple manifestations of childish anger and playful joy, are now given names, personalities, and a social structure for their little tribe. They are sad and anxious creatures, given to brief bursts of ebullient – and sometimes destructive – physical play, and in tremendous need of both structure and freedom, plus plenty of attention and cuddling, lest their unfiltered jealousies and tantrums get the better of them. So, they're much like Max himself, the rambunctious child of a loving but often too busy single mother, with an older sister who ignores him, and a shortage of friends.
For artists whose work is known for heavy doses of self-aware irony, what is perhaps most surprising about the story Jonze and Eggers create is how nakedly sentimental it is. The bonds, the conflicts, and the drama between Max and his created friends culminates in an emotional farewell that dispenses with Sendak's teeth-gnashing scene in favor of one that more closely resembles a downbeat and dreamy take on Dorothy's departure from Oz.
What really sells Jonze's whimsical fantasy world is the dazzling technical execution, and the convergence of so many near-perfect elements in the final mix. Brian Henson and the artists of the Jim Henson Company bring Sendak's unique creatures to life, aided by seamless and subtle CGI to give movement and feeling to their faces. Fantastic voice performances are delivered by James Gandofini, Chris Cooper, and others as the wild things, and the job of creating the physical and digital performances to go along with them is striking enough here to create a new standard for fantasy filmmaking.
It's impossible to talk about the film's breathtaking beauty and its convincing magical realism without mentioning cinematographer Lance Acord, whose distinctive visual style has become such a staple of a certain camp of '00s filmmaking, from Vincent Gallo to Sophia Copolla to Michel Gondry. Acord has shot his masterpiece here. His affinity for glowing light, sunsets, sunrises, and flared lenses defines the look of the movie, which is hands-down the most gorgeously shot of the year.
Whether Where the Wild Things Are is a movie for children is less important when it becomes clear just how great a film it is about childhood itself. The campfire singalong simplicity of Karen O's folky soundtrack is an effective representation of the film itself: a bunch of adults at play in the memories of their childhoods, all of those primary colored joys and sadnesses made immediate through a wild trip of imagination.
Where the Wild Things Are opens today at theaters all across the area.