Where the Wild Things Are (Movie)

What should we expect?

With any adaptation there is expectation for what we remember. A comparison to the private world we drew in our heads. A hope for full realization.

Where the Wild Things Are is a stunning visual. It rips across the screen with unbridled creativity, terrifying sincerity, and a mournful nostalgia for things come and gone. Eggers is to be congratulated on his extrapolation of characters from the haunting sketches found in the original book by Sendak.

It is not the sort of film that washes over you in simple rhythm. It's complicated, hazy, and unexpectedly heady. The monsters demand to be categorized as the fragmented aspects of a young boy's psyche. In this lost land we find longing, regret, stifled love, anger, loss, and dangerous abandon. The monsters knock down trees, throw each other into rocks, and collapse over Max in a suffocating, sweaty heap to nod off to sleep for an indeterminate period of time.

There is a sense of eternity. The island of monsters has always and will always exist. When Max departs it follows that the ennui persists for the complicated band of creatures. Their relationships grow and shrink. Their minds melt with cyclical arguments.

The voice talent was perfectly chosen and adeptly performed by Gandolfini, Dano, Whitaker, O'Hara, Cooper, and Ambrose . The use of puppets was brilliant. Too often in films now CGI is incorporated without thought or finesse. It's used as a catch-all for the logistical problems of directing creatively. In Wild Things both puppets and CGI were combined to compelling effect. It channeled the best of Henson's Labyrinth and Dark Crystal through the rich landscape of Jonze's perspective.

Back in the real world Keener plays a heartfelt Mom whose sincerity is touching. And Records' "Max" is dynamic.

Where the Wild Things Are flies in the face of the common adaptation of popular concepts. It doesn't pander. It doesn't talk down. It doesn't oversimplify. It doesn't apologize for its slow, contemplative pacing.

We make our demands on art. We expect revelation, but art expects of us as well. In the case of Wild Things it expects us to show up. It expects us to feel the warmth of childhood memory even while we engage our adult minds. To experience joy with the knowledge that there is a dip on the other side of the wave. It expects us to be as complex, and diverse, and silly as all humans can be. It expects we'll revitalize our imagination and that we'll remember that beneath the veneer of everyday living there exists still a Wild Thing in all of us.

INFO:
Where The Wild Things Are
film: www.wherethewildthingsare.warnerbros.com
book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_the_Wild_Things_Are