Wild Thing-- Maurice Sendak at the Movies

I remember the 60s well.  One of the things that happened in the 60s was that a children's book got banned from a lot of libraries, perhaps especially in the South.  It was Maurice Sendak's  Where the Wild Things Are  which came out when I was barely ten. Of course it later won a national book award, but it was still considered too dark and scary for most young readers, especially if one was prone to read such a book under the covers with aid of flash light, late at night, like I was.a There are only some 300+ words in the whole book, and so it was always considered doubtful that a feature length movie could ever be made out of this book.  How long can you stretch 20 pages and 300+ words?   As it turns out, pretty far. Spike Jonze is a very creative film maker  (see Being John Malcovich), and he is in his element with this film.  Here is the synopsis of it provided by Warner Brothers.

Innovative director Spike Jonze collaborates with celebrated author Maurice Sendak to bring one of the most beloved books of all time to the big screen in "Where the Wild Things Are," a classic... "Innovative director Spike Jonze collaborates with celebrated author Maurice Sendak to bring one of the most beloved books of all time to the big screen in "Where the Wild Things Are," a classic story about childhood and the places we go to figure out the world we live in. The film tells the story of Max, a rambunctious and sensitive boy who feels misunderstood at home and escapes to where the Wild Things are. Max lands on an island where he meets mysterious and strange creatures whose emotions are as wild and unpredictable as their actions. The Wild Things desperately long for a leader to guide them, just as Max longs for a kingdom to rule. When Max is crowned king, he promises to create a place where everyone will be happy. Max soon finds, though, that ruling his kingdom is not so easy and his relationships there prove to be more complicated than he originally thought."

Perhaps it is of some importance to note that Sendak collaborated on this adaptation for film, and was fully satisfied with the outcome. It is certainly one that is bound to win some awards for its creativity. Whether you ought to take small children to this film is another story. The beasties in this film are not 'wee beasties'  they are big beasties and they could be quite scary to small children.  And this film, while under two hours may well be too slow in places and too dark for many kids. The ones in front of me were constantly getting up and running to the concession stand and coming back. Since they didn't come back with any goodies I assumed they were escaping to daylight. At the end of the day I would say this is an excellent film for older children, at least as old as Max in the film, and for adults.  Certainly its message will be well over the heads of small children.  

So let's talk about Max.  Is he Mad Max, or King Max, or I Max?  The film, like the book, sees the world through the eyes of an eight or so year old boy. But Max is not your average  eight year old boy.  Not only does Max have a very vivid imagination, Max has no Father, and his only sibling Claire is doing her best to move on beyond childhood, leaving Max all alone with his fantasies and dreams. It will not be a surprise that a highly emotional boy in a less than perfect home who spends a lot of time being lonely and alone and afraid would have some pretty wild dreams.

Sometimes when life is difficult even adults retreat into their heads and live in a fantasy world. and certainly that is where our Max spends a lot of his time. His mother is trying to hold down a job, and date, and raise two children... and clearly there is not enough time or love for Max.

Children, especially those with vivid imaginations sometimes have a difficult time distinguishing what is real and what is fantasy, and Max is certainly a candidate for such confusion. And Max's imaginary world is emotion charged, unruly, and indeed at times wild and frightening.   Fear and love, and anger and self-loathing and hope and fun are all mixed in together. Sometimes psychologists say that children construct imaginary worlds where things go right and they are in control, especially when there is trauma and trouble in one's real world.  Max, it must be said, is no such child. His imaginary world and friends are about as unruly and scary as his real life companions.

The best part of this movie is Max's voyage of discovery to the island of Wild Things where he first postures and positions himself to be king over creatures much larger than himself,  which takes both some courage and some lies.  As the time away on the island goes on, Max not merely learns some things about himself (for instance that he has a destructive side he needs to control) and learns some coping skills that help in the real world, he begins to learn how to be honest with himself and others about who he is,and who he is not.  

The Bible has something to say about this subject--- "when I was a child I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I grew up, I put childish things behind me." (1 Cor. 13.11).  Max indeed sees life through a mirror darkly, and it is a dark and cracked mirror into which he gazes.  The good news is that he is not only beginning to grow up, and to want to grow up (for in the movie he knows he ought to go home and love and be loved by his mother), he learns you don't have to be a king to rule the monsters in your dreams and tame the fears in your mind.   You just need to become your best self--- to the max.

I highly recommend this film to parents (especially single parent moms or dads) who have children who are moody or struggle to come to grips with the real world, and live a good deal of the time in their imagination. Imagination is a wonderful thing.... except when you mistake it for reality.  But on the other hand it is out of our imaginations that we learn how to better construct or reconstruct and reconfigure our realities. 

Jim Henson's Muppet creators have once more done a spectacular job of creating creatures that look alive and lively and amazingly real, and all without the use of CG.This film and its imaginary island world should win all sorts of awards, and still some forty plus years after the book came out, its  stormy imaginary world can be said to be too disturbingly real for some.