148) Where the Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

Director: Spike Jonze

Starring: Max Records, Catherine Keener, James Gandolfini, Paul Dano, Catherine O'Hara, Forest Whitaker, Michael Berry Jr., Chris Cooper, Lauren Ambrose

The final Reel Dialogue for the year was held at Turramurra Uniting Church tonight with the film being Spike Jonze's adaptation of the beloved children's book Where the Wild Things Are. I saw this film at the cinemas late last year and was really surprised by it, not meaning that it was better or worse than I expected but just that it was different, and think that the ideas it explores and the way it chooses to explore them make it really well suited to an exercise like Reel Dialogue.

After throwing a tantrum because his mother (Keener) is paying more attention to her new boyfriend than to him, Max (Records) runs away from home to the land where the Wild Things roam. There he finds a childlike group of rough and tumble monsters led by the short tempered Carol (Gandolfini). Max convinces them to make him their king when he promises that he can keep all the sadness away.

I think like a lot of people, when I first heard they were making a film out of Maurice Sendak's children's book I wondered how they were going to do it. The book conjures up great images, and is in that way ideal for a film adaptation, but given it only contained nine sentences, it is very thin on narrative and character. Thus for a long time Where the Wild Things Are was among the many beloved stories which was placed in the 'too hard' pile, wearing the tag "unfilmable". If a filmmaker tried to flesh it out they'd be accused of not being true to the book and alienate it's millions of fans, but there simply weren't enough words in the book to make a direct adaptation. As a result Jonze was forced to take a few liberties with the storyline in the film to make it work as a feature length film, and also to add a bit of depth to the tale, but he has done so with great delicacy.

Jonze adds a prologue which informs everything that happens in the world of the Wild Things, giving it an extra layer of significance. Max is a boy from a broken home. His parents are divorced and his mother has a new boyfriend. Max also stands on the verge of adolescence. Thus everything which happens within the world of the Wild Things, a world within Max's imagination, helps Max explore these two issues; the nature of a family and what it means to grow up. The world of the Wild Things is an allegorical one, with each of the Wild Things representing a part of Max's personality, with the exception of KW, who obviously represents his mother.

What this leaves us with is a mood piece. While he has taken some license with his adaptation, Jonze hasn't done a great deal of fleshing out of the narrative. He hasn't given the film a driving storyline with important plot points placed throughout. In fact not a great deal happens in the film. There are different scenes and events, but to deliver it as a plot synopsis would make the film sound very dry. Where the Wild Things Are is all about the mood. It has a bittersweet mood, as you would expect from a story about the passing of childhood.

While Sendak's book is a children's favourite, Jonze's film is not really for kids. Rather than targeting the same demographic as the book, Where the Wild Things Are is more likely targeted at the generation of people who read the book when they were little. The lack of a clear plot will make be too boring for children, plus some of the thematic exploration is a bit too intense.

So much of the success of the book was its ability to conjure up images. Thankfully, the film is visually marvelous. The world of the Wild Things was shot primarily on location in Australia and diverse settings (one minute they're in bushland, then the desert, then the beach) really give the film that dreamlike quality. The Wild Things themselves, performed by actors in suits with CGI faces added, look great. They look exactly like you expect they should, slightly more 'realistic' than the cartoonish illustrations in the book, but maintaining the original look. The CGI faces are amongst the most subtle CGI work I've seen and using actors in suits meant that the Things could interact with Max and the landscape in a tangible and believable way, whereas using fully CGI characters always feels not quite right.

This is not one for the kids or those with a short attention span. Where the Wild Things Are won't have you on the edge of your seat. It will have you sitting back deep in thought. Jonze has produced a beautiful, thoughtful and touching film which while I'm sure devoted fans could still find something to complain about, for the rest of us appears to be valiant effort at a difficult adaptation.