Where the Wild Things Are

Some of you, particularly those with children, maybe aware of the recent cinema release of Where the Wild Things Are. The film is an adaption of Maurice Sendack’s American classic children’s story as envisioned by director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Dave Eggers. As much as Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl or perhaps even J.K Rowling are integral to the childhood of many children in the UK; Sendack’s Where the Wild Things Are is perhaps a US equivalent. Not that I wish to generalise about anyone’s childhood experiences on this or any side of the Atlantic…

As I discovered, after a visit to the evil empire of books that is Barnes & Noble, the story is a ten-sentence picture book that tells the story of a mischievous boy called Max. Essentially it seems the book is famous for the wonderfully imaginative illustrations of Sendack as opposed to his narrative, which vaguely rhymes but it is fairly stunted. However, the illustrations for the book are alive with a sincere childish credibility and it is easy to relate to why the book has captured the heart of many young children but also still resonates with many of its older, initial readers.

The film, however, is markedly different from the book, in part due to the need to create a full-length film from the sparsely sketched story of Max’s adventure with the Wild Things. The final result is an incredibly livid but yet oddly eerie and sinister story that does not truly reflect the conventional tone of a child’s film. In fairness to Jonze perhaps this conclusion is coloured by the legacy of the traditional happy and homogenously uplifting Disney film that still dominates the genre.

Still this film is incredibly weird and without any appreciation of the book or its illustrations – a film experience that proved to be decidedly trippy, to the point where I began to wonder whether my popcorn had been laced with some illicit substance. The film does not tell a story in a linear format which, if intentional, is designed to reflect the unpredictable imagination of the child, Max. One minor irritation with the character Max, is that although clearly a naughty child in the original story, Max has mutated to reflect the stereotypical ADHD and oppositional defiant traits of the ‘modern’ child. This recontextualising of the story to a new era has even placed Max within a broken home, seemingly further nods to our warped modern narrative of naughty children.

For me the strangest element of the film was James Gandolfini as the voice of one of the main characters, Carol. To hear the voice of my all time favourite mobster boss emanating from a six-foot tall furry creature with horns and a tail was very unsettling. I was worried that at any moment Max would be condemned to sleep with the fishes by this creature that had seemingly swallowed Tony Soprano – he even bore the same vengeful, maniacal traits as New Jersey’s best loved Mafioso!

Maybe Where the Wild Things Are suffers from a common failing of many big screen adaptations of popular books, namely living up to the hype of the reader’s imagination. It is an interesting film and worth watching but if you are looking for a more child friendly fantasy film then I recommend Tim Burton’s Big Fish.