Where The Wild Things Are

After watching Spike Jonze’s latest masterpiece, I find it hard to comprehend just what kind of studio would have the audacity to invest $80 million in it. It’s definitely not your typical film – if Jonze and co-writer Dave Eggers were to submit their screenplay in a screenwriting class, they would be ridiculed for the rest of their lives. It is a structure-less film whose plot can be summed up in no more than 5 minutes of actual action: Max has a fight with his mom, runs away from home, thinks about what he’s done and returns. Not that the film didn’t have its share of problems. Warner Brothers were expecting a family-friendly film and they got a philosophical, rambling rumination on the inner psyche of the child with scary monsters and an indie rock soundtrack by Karen O. After the future of the film seemed to be in jeopardy, Warner Brothers eventually pulled through and proved just what a fantastic studio they are and how much faith they have in their auteurs, and they shifted the direction of the film and the marketing, realizing that this wasn’t a kids movie at all – it was a movie for adults who reminisce on their childhoods – which is pretty much everyone, so they were in luck. In the end, it all worked out – the film was a box office success, and we the audience got the pleasure of enjoying Jonze’s unique and incredibly beautiful vision, the way we were intended to see it.

Script-wise, this really is somewhat of an anomaly. Its actual plot, as I explained, is fairly simple, and it spends most of its time in Max’s head, or more specifically, in the magical world he’s created – it might be one of the longest narratives that take place in the dreamscape of the human subconscious. The film starts off with a bang, portraying just what it feels like to be a kid, ignored by his mom and sister, no one to play with, and left to go on adventures in his imagination by himself. I love the fact that Max is a genuine, full-fledged child, quite unlike the wise-for-their-age depictions of children that we often see in movies: he cries, he screams, he has tantrums, he thinks that the world revolves around him, his imagination runs wild and he doesn’t think of the consequences of his actions. All of these elements and emotions are crucial for understanding of what we see Max experiencing with the Wild Things. I was really impressed that the film didn’t take a simplistic approach to the monsters – Jonze and Eggers could have gone the direct route, had every monster represent an aspect of Max’s life, be it his absent father, his busy mother, his sister or the friends he doesn’t have – but they are too smart to do that, and instead, the Wild Things as a collective serve as an extension of Max’s inner emotions. They also cry, scream, have tantrums over trivial things, think the world revolves around them, and of course, they too run wild – literally! It’s just such a majestic and beautiful allegory as, through the monsters and their own conflicts and feelings, Max starts to realize that actions do have consequences and that he made a mistake.

Aside from its incredibly rich emotional palette, the film is also a technical marvel. The cinematography is loose, lively and, well – wild; Jonze goes the indie route despite his major studio budget and shoots low-key with lots of frantic, handheld shots, coarse jump cuts and just a very loose visual style altogether with the camera jumping around, tracking different characters and, like Max, having a difficult time to capture the full picture thanks to the chaos going on. The production design is also spectacular and really imaginative; almost all of the imagery in Max’s imaginary world is inspired directly by subtle visual cues from his real life: the straw ball on his bedside table becomes a massive fortress, the model in his room made of egg cartons becomes Carol’s model of his dream city, and the list goes on. The entire package is topped off by a simply magical soundtrack with original songs by Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and frequent Coen Brothers collaborator Carter Burwell that totally captured what the film was about, the childlike nostalgia. Another really impressive technical achievement is the creation of the Wild Things. I have no doubt that most directors these days would go the full CGI route; Jonze, the classicist that he is, insisted on using physical, tangible models – suits created by the Jim Henson company. Originally the faces were meant to be animatronic but the heads proved to be too heavy, so Jonze and crew opted to create the faces in CGI – and it couldn’t have paid off more. I am a huge supporter of traditional puppets and animatronics, but the Wild Things need to convey so much emotion, and animatronic faces would have just felt lifeless.

Also worth mentioning is the incredibly rich and truly fantastic voice work done by the eclectic and talented cast, most of which I didn’t even know were involved in the film. Instead of recording them separately, Jonze put all the actors in the same room and had them interact with one another, wearing headset microphones to record their dialogue. The result is a really noticeable flow and dynamic in their scenes together, with a lot of spontaneity and little, subtle details and moments that would never have been captured had the sound been recorded separately. Front and center is James Gandolfini, who delivers the most tender and heartwarming performance as Carol – which is especially surprising considering that this is Tony Soprano we’re talking about. But really, everyone delivers equally wonderful turns. That said, the star of the show is none other than Max Records, who truly delivers just the most adorable, magnificent, beautiful performance as Max. I think it’s amazing to see child actors actually act like children but still have the intelligence and range to depict really genuine and raw, strong-rooted emotions.

With this film, Spike Jonze has achieved something truly incredible: for an hour and a half, he made me feel like a child again. And I don’t mean superficially – he didn’t just make me sympathize with Max and feel for him; Jonze genuinely made me remember what it was like for me to feel what Max is going through. Obviously, my circumstances are different than his, most people’s are – my parents aren’t divorced, I don’t have older siblings, and so in regards to that, perhaps I’ve never really felt Max’s pain. But I still saw a lot of myself in him. I used to pretend that the carpet was lava, too. I used to play with LEGOs and build models and forts and feel that my parents were too busy to give me the proper attention that, at age 10, I felt I deserved, especially with two younger brothers hogging it from me. I, too, imagined fantastical creatures and lands and wrote stories about them. The film portrays enough very general and universal feelings and emotions a child often emulates that I think anyone can potentially have the same nostalgic reaction. In all, Jonze’s film is a totally unique emotional experience unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in another film; I was transported to a time that everyone always looks back on in nostalgic longing, and, perhaps for the first time, I realized just what it was that I felt back then, and how it influences me now.