‘Where the Wild Things Are’ offers nostalgic adaptation for
adult fans of children’s book
‘Where the Wild Things Are’ starring Max Records and Catherine
Keener, with voices by James Gandolfini and Lauren Ambrose
Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze’s adaptation of
”
Where the Wild Things Are
”
is a movie based on a children’s book that isn’t really made for
children. That became clear early on in the theater this weekend
when the little Minnie Mouse voice of a young girl behind me kept
asking her parents
”
What’s happening to him?
”
when Max (Max Records) cried. The things that upset him weren’t
the things a small child would understand
– like feeling ignored by his family or angry at his parents’
divorce.
‘Where the Wild Things Are’ offers nostalgic adaptation for adult fans of children’s book
‘Where the Wild Things Are’ starring Max Records and Catherine Keener, with voices by James Gandolfini and Lauren Ambrose
Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze’s adaptation of “Where the Wild Things Are” is a movie based on a children’s book that isn’t really made for children. That became clear early on in the theater this weekend when the little Minnie Mouse voice of a young girl behind me kept asking her parents “What’s happening to him?” when Max (Max Records) cried. The things that upset him weren’t the things a small child would understand – like feeling ignored by his family or angry at his parents’ divorce.
The story “Where the Wild Things Are” and the wild creatures in it are the creations of Maurice Sendak, who wrote and illustrated the book in 1963. It is about a young boy named Max who wears a wolf costume and causes trouble at home until he is sent to his room when his mother calls him a wild thing. In the book, Max’s room grows into a forest and he sets sail for an island where all the wild things are. They make him king, but he gets lonely and returns home. The book has fewer than a dozen sentences, but has plenty of illustrations of the wild things.
To make the story into a full-length feature, Eggers and Jonze had to add a little more to it. They created a home life for Max that includes an older sister who ignores him and a single mother who is just starting to date. Max only wants his sister and mother to pay attention to him when he creates things such as an igloo out of snow or a fort out of blankets and pillows. It is all the typical stuff a young boy would do, but his sister and mother are sometimes too preoccupied to indulge him. The thing that sets Max off into a rampage is that his mother won’t come up to see his fort and is cooking frozen corn for dinner. He dons a wolf costume and runs through the house, biting his mother when she sends him to bed. Instead of going to his room, Max runs out into the woods. The set-up for Max’s getting angry and storming out into the night alone is short and, perhaps, would have been made more powerful if Eggers and Jonze had offered a few more sleights from Max’s family to make him so angry.
But the bulk of the movie is supposed to be about Max’s encounter “Where the Wild Things Are.” It is clear from the beginning that the wild things are supposed to express Max’s feelings about his parents’ divorce, about his mother dating someone new, about his sister spending all her time with her friends. When he arrives on the island, Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini), the largest of the Wild Things is destroying things because KW (voiced by Lauren Ambrose) has gone off to spend time with her new friends.
The creatures from Sendak’s book come to life amazingly with their horns and chicken feet and scales. But these Wild Things all have personalities of their own. Judith (voiced by Catherine O’Hara) is always depressed and Alexander (voiced by Paul Dano) is always scared. Douglas (voiced by Chris Cooper) seems to be the one that is most reasonable. After they threaten to eat him, Max convinces the Wild Things that he is a king and that he can protect them from all the sadness in the world. Max finds, however, that being in charge of a family isn’t always easy. He has to contend with jealousy among the creatures, hurt feelings and fighting.
Max’s interactions with KW as well as KW’s relationship with Carol are the most revealing about how Max feels about his own life. KW has found new friends (perhaps as Max’s father has found a new life) and she finds it hard to be around Carol who is angry a lot of the time. Carol acts out when he is hurt and destroys or eats the things he really loves. There is one moment when KW and Carol get into a fight, and if the dialogue were different, it could have been a married couple fighting about the things they fight about when divorce is inevitable. Which is to say, the two were fighting about nothing because they had grown apart and didn’t know how to be together anymore.
The movie may not be meant for children, but it does bring new meaning for those of us who grew up reading the book. Author Maurice Sendak was involved with the adaptation of the movie so it definitely does justice to his story. It just fills it out a bit and breathes more life into the Wild Things.
