Can you keep out the sadness?
Nov. 9th, 2009 08:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitchen_kinkThe first time I saw a trailer for the new Dave Eggers/Spike Jonze film of Maurice Sendak's children's classic Where the Wild Things Are, I cried. Seeing that someone was daring to bring this beloved book to life, and seeing that it looked beautiful, all I could think was: please let this be as good as it looks, pleeease let this be as good as it looks.
As it turns out, it's even better.
Getting the look of the film right is only a first step, though an important one; 2007's The Golden Compass captured the steampunk vision of that world in radiant detail and made almost all of the right casting choices, but failed catastrophically to achieve the depth of mystery and darkness the story demands. This film recreates the neutrals and muted pastels of the Wild Things' dark forest, the furious hatching that constitutes its structures - it even places the world in a strange twilight, where night stars compete with a moon so bright it seems like the dying sun so often referenced in the film. But this film goes so much farther than getting the look right.
I'd be hard pressed to say exactly what the book Where the Wild Things Are is about. I know that in it, a child called Max tearasses around the house in his wolf pajamas, causes some mayhem and destruction, and is sent to bed without supper. A forest grows in his room, he sails a private boat to the island of the Wild Things, and keeps them from eating him by winning a staring contest. The Wild Things make him their king, and he calls a Wild Rumpus. After stomping around, howling at the moon, and other Wild-type activities, Max decides he's lonely for people, and hungry to boot. So he leaves in his boat, though the Wild Things call after him, "Don't go! We'll eat you up, we love you so." When he gets home, his supper is in his room - and still hot.
What's the moral? Is there one? It's a beautiful-looking book, dark and primal in its feel, and in 1964 perhaps presaged an era less innocent than the one the children of the postwar '50s were taught to believe. Sometimes you have to be wild, the book seems to say. Sometimes you might get sent to bed without supper, but you're still loved. Or perhaps, When you're a kid, you can be king of the beasts, even though you're still the peon of adults. But you still need adults. They're where the food is, and they keep you from getting eaten yourself.
It's a strange tale, and the filmmakers take great advantage of this fact, expanding it to feature length and exploring dark themes, Jungian archetypes, questions of power, anger, wildness and civilization, loneliness, despair, and family. Leaving a single mom who doesn't have time to pay as much attention to Max as he wants, Max runs away from home to find himself in a world of creatures simultaneously lovable and terrifying, hybrid giants he must woo with tall tales to keep from getting eaten (like all of their previous kings). Like a wolf pack with no alpha, the Wild Things enact a continual drama of affection, play, conflict, shows of dominance, leaving and returning, hurting each other over and over, and ever searching for a leader. With Max as their king, a shaky sense of cameraderie returns, until the forces of loneliness, strife, and lack of meaning have them turning on each other again. In the final confrontation, KW, the rebel who keeps running away from the pack, hides Max in her mouth to protect him from the wrath of Carol - a young male Wild Thing just as afraid and credulous and motherless as Max is. When Max re-emerges, slimy and once again free of the womb, he realizes that he has to go home: his family conflicts will follow him until he learns to deal with them in reality.
There are no false reconciliations, no dramatic runs for a final hug, no burst of affection for the curmudgeonly and borderline-ish Wild Thing, Judith. There is just Max, sailing away on his boat, howling back as the Wild Things howl, watching him leave, losing, one senses for the thousandth time, the leader in their endless drama of childhood loneliness. They will stay that way forever, one feels: alone in a wild but isolated land, with no one to shepherd them, to take care of them, to teach them how to grow up. As the bird-like Wild Thing, Douglas, says, "There's no such thing as a king."
When Max returns home, his mother, exhausted, embraces him, sits him down at the table, and watches as he falls upon his food like a dog. Then, in some of the best final frames of a film I have ever seen, Max watches as his mother finally succumbs to wearyness in their late-night kitchen, no longer able to stay awake to watch him put away chocolate cake. Seeing her eyelids sink into sleep, Max, with a look of compassion and new maturity, smiles.
If the messages were buried in Sendak's book, they are clear here, though presented in such a visceral and understated way as to be gut-punching: life is rough. It's not always gonna be okay. People suck sometimes. Nobody is really going to take care of you. Things change. Being leaderless is hard; being a leader is even harder. Yes, there is the possibility of love, of protection, of happiness, but as Judith says, "Happiness isn't always the best way to be happy."
But it says some other things, too. Some things can't be tamed. Wildness is important. Where there is fear, there's power. Love is possible.
I don't know if this movie is for kids, though the creatures are adorable and frequently hilarious. But it is starkly beautiful, strange, intensely moving, and true. Go now.
As it turns out, it's even better.
Getting the look of the film right is only a first step, though an important one; 2007's The Golden Compass captured the steampunk vision of that world in radiant detail and made almost all of the right casting choices, but failed catastrophically to achieve the depth of mystery and darkness the story demands. This film recreates the neutrals and muted pastels of the Wild Things' dark forest, the furious hatching that constitutes its structures - it even places the world in a strange twilight, where night stars compete with a moon so bright it seems like the dying sun so often referenced in the film. But this film goes so much farther than getting the look right.
I'd be hard pressed to say exactly what the book Where the Wild Things Are is about. I know that in it, a child called Max tearasses around the house in his wolf pajamas, causes some mayhem and destruction, and is sent to bed without supper. A forest grows in his room, he sails a private boat to the island of the Wild Things, and keeps them from eating him by winning a staring contest. The Wild Things make him their king, and he calls a Wild Rumpus. After stomping around, howling at the moon, and other Wild-type activities, Max decides he's lonely for people, and hungry to boot. So he leaves in his boat, though the Wild Things call after him, "Don't go! We'll eat you up, we love you so." When he gets home, his supper is in his room - and still hot.
What's the moral? Is there one? It's a beautiful-looking book, dark and primal in its feel, and in 1964 perhaps presaged an era less innocent than the one the children of the postwar '50s were taught to believe. Sometimes you have to be wild, the book seems to say. Sometimes you might get sent to bed without supper, but you're still loved. Or perhaps, When you're a kid, you can be king of the beasts, even though you're still the peon of adults. But you still need adults. They're where the food is, and they keep you from getting eaten yourself.
It's a strange tale, and the filmmakers take great advantage of this fact, expanding it to feature length and exploring dark themes, Jungian archetypes, questions of power, anger, wildness and civilization, loneliness, despair, and family. Leaving a single mom who doesn't have time to pay as much attention to Max as he wants, Max runs away from home to find himself in a world of creatures simultaneously lovable and terrifying, hybrid giants he must woo with tall tales to keep from getting eaten (like all of their previous kings). Like a wolf pack with no alpha, the Wild Things enact a continual drama of affection, play, conflict, shows of dominance, leaving and returning, hurting each other over and over, and ever searching for a leader. With Max as their king, a shaky sense of cameraderie returns, until the forces of loneliness, strife, and lack of meaning have them turning on each other again. In the final confrontation, KW, the rebel who keeps running away from the pack, hides Max in her mouth to protect him from the wrath of Carol - a young male Wild Thing just as afraid and credulous and motherless as Max is. When Max re-emerges, slimy and once again free of the womb, he realizes that he has to go home: his family conflicts will follow him until he learns to deal with them in reality.
There are no false reconciliations, no dramatic runs for a final hug, no burst of affection for the curmudgeonly and borderline-ish Wild Thing, Judith. There is just Max, sailing away on his boat, howling back as the Wild Things howl, watching him leave, losing, one senses for the thousandth time, the leader in their endless drama of childhood loneliness. They will stay that way forever, one feels: alone in a wild but isolated land, with no one to shepherd them, to take care of them, to teach them how to grow up. As the bird-like Wild Thing, Douglas, says, "There's no such thing as a king."
When Max returns home, his mother, exhausted, embraces him, sits him down at the table, and watches as he falls upon his food like a dog. Then, in some of the best final frames of a film I have ever seen, Max watches as his mother finally succumbs to wearyness in their late-night kitchen, no longer able to stay awake to watch him put away chocolate cake. Seeing her eyelids sink into sleep, Max, with a look of compassion and new maturity, smiles.
If the messages were buried in Sendak's book, they are clear here, though presented in such a visceral and understated way as to be gut-punching: life is rough. It's not always gonna be okay. People suck sometimes. Nobody is really going to take care of you. Things change. Being leaderless is hard; being a leader is even harder. Yes, there is the possibility of love, of protection, of happiness, but as Judith says, "Happiness isn't always the best way to be happy."
But it says some other things, too. Some things can't be tamed. Wildness is important. Where there is fear, there's power. Love is possible.
I don't know if this movie is for kids, though the creatures are adorable and frequently hilarious. But it is starkly beautiful, strange, intensely moving, and true. Go now.
