Beautiful But Despairing, Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are Revels in Primal Ferocity

When I first saw the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze's big-screen adaptation of the classic Maurice Sendak book, I was immediately impressed by the visuals, as young Max and each of the Wild Things he encounters seems to have been flawlessly transformed to three dimensions through the magic of puppetry and computer animation. Although I never counted the succinct but stirring picture book as a particular favorite, I enjoyed it, and I was curious to see how it might translate into an hour and a half long movie. I got to find out yesterday. The visuals still swept me away, as did many other elements of the film. But though I expected the movie to be a bit dark for a film likely to be seen by millions of children, I wasn't prepared for how gutted I would feel during and after the viewing. Rarely have I had such a visceral reaction to a movie.

Where the Wild Things Are revolves around Max, portrayed with primal ferocity by young unknown Max Records, who screams and slashes his way through his everyday life and his stint as the ruler of the Wild Things, all while dressed in a wonderful wolf suit. Other humans are scarcely present. Catherine Keener's role as Max's mom, an understanding but overtaxed divorcee, is the most significant. Blink and you'll miss Mark Ruffalo as her boyfriend, who unwittingly sparks Max's massive meltdown. Only barely more visible is Pepita Emmerichs, another unknown playing Max's older sister Claire, who clearly loves her little brother but currently gravitates more toward friends. Max's big scene with her and her pals is both exhilarating and devastating, with a brief compassionate gesture by one of Claire's friends our best invitation to sympathize with her perspective. In just a few sentences in one short scene, Steve Mouzakis establishes Max's teacher as a man possessing passion but little regard for his students' sensitivities.

The bulk of the movie takes place with the Wild Things, each of which has a precise visual inspiration in the book, though the specific personality traits are invented for the film. Most of the creatures are representative of some element of Max's own personality. Big, lumbering Ira (Forest Whitaker) is gentle and simply longs for affection. Rhino-like Judith (Catherine O'Hara) is perpetually sullen and snarky, while the nearly silent bull (Michael Berry Jr.) keeps to himself. Alexander (Paul Dano), a goat, often feels neglected. Douglas (Chris Cooper), a bird, is fiercely loyal. Most of all, James Gandolfini's Carol, a loose cannon of a creature who hero-worships Max and is furious when he fails to live up to his expectations, reflects the rage and frustration Max has been feeling. Alone among the Wild Things, K. W. (Lauren Ambrose) seems to serve a different purpose. Warmly maternal, she helps Max to work out his complicated feelings about his mother and sister while she attempts to demonstrate to him that inviting new people into one's life doesn't have to mean disregarding those who are already there.

All of these characterizations are well done, and it's magical to watch as iconic images from the book find their way to the big screen with deeper layers of context. What's more, the savagery of Maurice's vision is thoroughly intact. However, therein lies the trouble. This is an excellently done film. But the anger coursing through it is sometimes alarming, and the sense of despair it produces is hard to shake off. In particular, Max's teacher enthusiastically describes the eventual death of the sun, and as someone who spent many an evening freaking out over a bloated orange sun on the cusp of setting, half-convinced it was about to explode, I can thoroughly appreciate the terror this produces in Max. He revisits this tutorial in a later scene with Carol that is set in the desert and is so desolate I half-expected Dust in the Wind to start playing in the background. I was forcefully reminded of the disturbing planetarium scene in Rebel Without a Cause, which I happened to be watching in a culture studies class as the events of 9-11 unfolded. Despite the undercurrent of affection among Max and his newfound subjects, most warmly indicated in a scene in which they all sleep together in one big pile, I couldn't shake the overpowering sensations of chaos and nihilism.

Jonze clearly had a vision for this movie, and I suspect he achieved just the tone he was seeking, and one of which Sendak approves. Nonetheless, I would hesitate to recommend the movie for young or especially sensitive children. I'm not a crier, and I didn't have dry eyes for most of the movie. Obviously it's an effective film if it can provoke such a strong reaction. Just be warned that if you leap into this wild rumpus, it may be a while before you can extricate yourself.

Sendak's Freaky Tale of Goblin Abductions is Really Out There

In Jim Henson's Labyrinth, spirited young heroine Sarah has a copy of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are in her room. I can't help but wonder whether Henson ever read Outside Over There, another story by Sendak involving young children and strange creatures. In this Caldecott Honor book, Ida, a girl who is a few years younger than Sarah, similarly loses her baby sibling to goblin abduction and must retrieve her. Curiously, Sendak's goblins look just like babies; I'm not sure if this is how they always look or if it's just a momentary disguise to confuse Ida. In any case, the basic plot is similar, though the two stories unfold very differently.

Outside Over There isn't a very long book, and there's only a sentence or two of text per page. Our focus is supposed to be on the paintings that take up most of the space. These are artful and pretty realistic, though there is a strangeness to them I can't quite pin down. Sendak's done some pretty trippy stuff before - In the Night Kitchen is especially bizarre - so it's no great surprise to find another of his books to be exceptionally odd.

The illustration in which the yowling baby is carried away by goblins while Ida idly plays her horn beside a freakish-looking faux infant made of ice is chilling, as is the one in which Ida floats over the city, yellow cloak flapping wildly, as the goblins, concealed in their wraith-like robes, stand guard over her sister. Ida always has a melancholy look about her, which is appropriate for a girl whose father is away at sea and whose sister has been taken, but it makes her a little harder to embrace. The colors used throughout the book are deep and dark, the landscape and clothing richly textured. I can understand why the artwork was recognized; I just don't care for it all that much.

I'm also not crazy about the writing style, which is clipped and seems to be trying to achieve a particular dialect, though I can't say what that would be. Words that seem like they should be adverbs become adjectives, as in "they quick churned," or adjectives that should be integrated more naturally into the sentence show up after the noun, as in "Ida mad" and "Ida sly".

Outside Over There is an odd and unsettling little book, and it's not nearly as creative and action-packed as Labyrinth, so I'd recommend the latter if you're in the mood for goblins and stick with the wild things if you've got a hankering for Sendak.

In the Night Kitchen as Wild as Sendak's More Celebrated Ventures

A couple years ago, I took a college class aimed at preparing future educators to create lesson plans revolving around certain texts representative of children’s literature. Although I have no plans to teach, I took the class out of a deep love of and interest in juvenile literature. Although we started the class with the universally familiar The Tale of Peter Rabbit, we soon moved on to more unfamiliar territory. Though most of us in the class had read and enjoyed Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are as youngsters, few of us had even heard of In the Night Kitchen. Some of us were in for a bit of a shock.

It’s hard to imagine such a simple children’s book causing such alarm, but not everyone approved of the depictions that earned this slim volume the distinction of Caldecott Honor. This is probably part of the reason that it is not as widely known as Wild Things. It’s a graphically driven book, with large pictures filling the pages and only a few oversized, carefully lettered words driving along the narration. Everything seems larger than life, which is appropriate given the fact that the bulk of the book is a dreamscape. Young Mickey is tiny compared to his surroundings, yet he twists his size to his advantage. The world he has landed in is a distortion of the world he experiences daily; the airplane hanging over his head as he drifts to sleep and the fact that he hears a noise below him, where the kitchen would be, are indicators of what sorts of images this dream will hold.

The three bakers whom Mickey meets are large and pudgy, fairly unthreatening and indistinct from one another. They are jovial characters except when they fear they will have no milk to complete their cake. After reading through the book a couple times, I noticed that their eyes remain closed until Mickey makes his presence known, indicating visually that they have been oblivious to his presence up to this point. They seem to represent authority, but in Mickey’s dream they hold no sway over him. The book taps into a child’s disdain for societal conventions. The simplest and most controversial manifestation of this comes when Mickey falls out of his clothes. He appears startled and disturbed when still in his pajamas, but when he is free of his clothing he seems to be quite content. Later, he strikes a compromise, accepting the societal convention of clothes but fashioning them for himself out of batter. He further expresses his individuality by insisting that he get milk for the bakers “the Mickey way.”

Both Wild Things and Night Kitchen involve a young child finding a niche for himself in a strange and fantastical setting. This tale further purports to serve the purpose of an explanatory folk tale – in chronicling Mickey’s journey, it tells us why we have cake every morning. Of course, most of us don’t have cake every morning, but this further goes along with the idea of the child being in charge here. If Mickey had his way, we would have cake every morning. Hey, sounds good to me.

It took me a few readings of this book to decide I liked it. The illustrations really require more reading than the words and reveal possible deeper meanings in the story. The illustrations, though rather dark and flat in color, are intriguing; especially enjoyable is the cityscape consisting of food containers. I wouldn’t let a little nudity get in the way of enjoying this book. It may not be as immediately embraceable as Wild Things, but it’s worth taking the extra time to settle into an appreciation of it.