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Where the Wild Things Are
The potential problem with Spike Jonze's adaptation of Maurice Sendak's timeless and narratively sparse fable was always going to be that huge doses of artistic license would be required to fill out the feature film’s run time. And the inherent danger of this is that the extra inevitable content will detract from Sendak's simple story. Such fears were entirely justified, as it turned out, as the resulting film expands Sendak's vision where it ought not and doesn't expand it where it ought.
Part of the beauty of Sendak's story is the duality of the narrative: children see it as a straightforward, slightly scary adventure story whereas adults identify with its affectionate sub narrative on the insecurities, narcissism and inherent emotional chaos of childhood. In order to pad out its run time, Jonze's resolutely adult film brings the latter to the fore and the result is akin to being preached at for an hour and a half with what was quite apparent in the first five minutes. Where the central theme of Sendak's book was an exercise in subtlety, elegance and simplicity, the vastly expanded movie is thematically verbose to the point of being blindingly obvious, plugging its one simple theme with such broken-record repetition that all such subtlety is lost. The film is a longwinded means of making a point that the book made in a few words and some very fine pictures and as such an expansion on the thematic elements of the story would have been most welcome.
By contrast, Jonze does expand the book in several key areas but in ways that weaken the intended message of the story, so these departures are a little puzzling.
For instance, Jonze gives the ‘wild things’ personalities and names and this serves only to distract us from the focus of the story which is Max. Jonze misinterprets the monsters as characters when they are actually entities - they are manifested euphemisms for Max's rage. Imbuing the monsters with characterisation seems contrary to the intention of the story because it makes them appear less ‘wild’ and thus robs the film of impact when Max adopts the authoritarian role (i.e. that of his mother) and ‘tames’ them. This is, of course, the whole point of the story!
Max is also older in the film, playing a ten year old rather than a five year old as depicted in the book. This decision has implications for our empathy with the character as Max's misbehaviour and his struggle to come to terms with his own emotions is much more acceptable (and understandable) in a five year old than it is in someone twice that age.
There is also a puzzling departure in the means by which Max enters his imagination and, by proxy, the land of the wild things. The bedroom transforming into the wild forest, as depicted in the book, provided an infinitely more elegant transition into Max's imagination than the running-away-from-home sequence shown here, although this is perhaps consistent with Max's increased age in the film. There is also a real passage of time occurring here which is not present in the book, which serves to only dilute the power of Max's imagination.
Successfully adapting Sendak's book was a tall order for Jonze but he's an interesting, capable director so the project showed promise. Ultimately, though, Jonze's style has gotten in the way of the central tenets of Sendak's story and the result is an opportunity sorely missed.
Stuart Jamieson
wherethewildthingsare.warnerbros.com
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