Where Are Those Wild Things?

Forget every sugar coated, clichéd Hollywood children’s film you’ve ever watched. The untamed and profoundly beautiful Where the Wild Things are is a mind meddling and raw film full of imagination, bought to life by Maurice Sendak, the author who wrote and illustrated the classic book in 1963, and Spike Jonze, the Oscar nominated director with the skill to explode childhood visuals and emotions onto the big screen.

The young boy Max, (Max Records) is portrayed by a vibrantly alive performance, that surely is a high mark for child actors. Max discovers that his divorced mother (Catherine Keener) has moved on from the love she lost by a new lover (Mark Ruffalo). Jumping on a table in a youthful wolf suit, Max rears up like an animal. “I hate you, I’ll eat you up,” Max shouts at his mother, biting her before scampering away from his home in search of an undiscovered island where wild creatures roam and play. Or so Max thinks.

The original books consists of no more than 10 sentences. The challenge for Jonze and co-writer Dave Eggers is to flesh out the tale to a full feature length. Jonze began by breaking rules, from the moment he climbs into a tiny sailboat and heads out to sea, Max declares himself king of the wild world.

Following a more traditional route, the voice work was done by professional actors. James Gandolfini excels as Carol, the creature leader who Max finds tearing down his home. In place of recording each actor separately, Jonze gathered them together, encouraging howling. The spontaneity is infectious.

That’s where tradition ends, instead of the easy animated route, Jonze and his team travelled to the outbacks of Australia and shot the action live with puppeteers inside nine foot creature costumes. This wild place is certainly a beautiful one. It’s also a mean and sometimes shy, dark one. The essence of the wild lies deep within the connection to that of a Childs dream. A sense of magical mystery is captured by hand-held-camera master Lance Acord.

Where the Wild Things Are is ultimately about a child’s innocence brushing up against reality’s harshness. The film’s contrast between a child’s sense of fun and the harsh reality of modern life really strikes home at the ideas of life for a kid, and the script captures that genuine sentiment. It truly is a magical, even fearful world that is not without darkness, but also offers a ray of hope that certainly reminds us that sometimes the most important things in our lives are right in front of us.