Where The Wild Things Are: The Persistence of Innocence (Film Review)

In 1963 Maurice Sendak released his great children's book, Where the Wild Things Are. Since then it has been essential literature to millions of children around the world. An absolute staple of book shelves next to Barry, Milne, Carrol and Seuss, Where The Wild Things Are is one of those essential cultural primers, an introduction for children and reminder for adults of exactly what it is that's so magical about being a child.

In the story a young boy, Max, dressed in a wolf costume, misbehaves and is sent to bed without supper. While in his room it alters from bedroom to jungle and there he meets a gaggle of beasts who accept him as king and take him parading through the Jungle. Unlike many other fictional journeys in children's lit. this one takes no glance at the transience of childhood (a'la Peter Pan) or the symbolism of passing innocence (i.e. Winnie The Pooh). In its brief ten sentence duration the story prefers to dwell upon and celebrate the privilege of childhood to disappear from situations into whole other worlds.

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Film director Spike Jonze has made a career of melting the boundaries between logic and imagination. His speciality is tearing at the fabric of the real without offending the consistency of his established internal logic. In Being John Malkovich (1999) it mattered less that John Cusack and Catherine Keener were crawling around in some one else's head, more so the emotional realities of love and betrayal relevant to the story. In Adaptation Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kauffman turned their skewed whimsical deconstructionism on the very process of writing and film making, letting the human capitol at stake in narrative creation surface from a self referential surrealist mind-scape.

This weekend Jonze has finally released his long awaited adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are. On paper the combination of Sendak's template and Jonze's interpretation seems inspired, intuitive. Who else could build the land of the wild things and have it emerge in a truthful emotionally weighted form without sacrificing the book's vision of innocence persisting through shadow and adventure. But historically the idea of a film adaptation of a favorite book is a reason for clenched teeth and abject dread. What might be lost or added? Could it possibly live up to its potential and not betray its origins?

Partial answer arrived some months ago with the initial press material. The images of the large Henson-esque Wild Things lumbering through forrest and across coastal landscape with young Max ecstatically in toe, backed by the pulsing joyous soundtrack gave one immediate hope and a dose of that most dreaded of all movie going mind sets, high expectations.

What Jonze and company have achieved with the film, with effusive and unreserved credit due to his special effects, design, photography and music crews, is a film of incisive memory. Energetic and lovely, it reaches a depth of feeling and authenticity that could only be achieved through vivid imaginings.

Jonze and his co-writer, acclaimed memoirist Dave Eggers, do a splendid job of remaining inside the mind of a child. The logic that follows from word and event in the film will be distantly familiar to anyone who was ever eight years old, snowed in or playing outside, recasting loneliness as an epic game and grand event.

The film is a joy to hear and see. The soundtrack, provided by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeah's and numerous other hip scenester artists, is ebullient to the point of frothing drama. And the grainy outdoor photography, capturing every ounce of light and motion, gives the land of the beasts an archly cinematic texture in the great tradition of OZ.

Much like Sendak's book the film of Where The Wild Things Are revels in the absolutes of childhood, rather than its transience. The thought patterns of a pre-adolescent boy are wild and scattered, poorly informed and naive. But they are also resonant and deeply felt by the one who has them and Jonze's film celebrates that and invites you to do the same.