Well, I saw Where the Wild Things Are a few hours ago, and I felt like sharing my thoughts. I just ripped my super-long comment from
io9 with a few edits, although since this is my blog now and I no longer have any real desire to make this civil, there's a little bit of rant in here.
I got a very different read off this movie than many people did (most felt it was extremely nihilistic, depressing and pointless). Personally, it gave me a similar feeling as that of the book. Max is a brat, he goes to Where the Wild Things Are, becomes discontent and then goes home feeling relieved and renewed to find that he still has a mother that loves him and still has a place to come home to.
Other than the direction Eggers and Jonze took with the Wild Things, they kind of just fleshed it out with more gruesome details of growing up. I personally felt that his journey to WTWTA became a learning experience, that people are just going to be what they are and not being comfortable with yourself makes matters worse. Even though Carol's response to "I'm Max" was "well that's not very much," I felt like it became a turning point for him. No, it's not a lot to other people. But it will make you happier if you accept that, and make other people easier to deal with. After that moment, he goes home, and finds comfort there after facing the hardships he knows he'll have to deal with in coming to terms with other people, who are generally shitty. His mother loves him no matter what, she'll stay up late waiting for him and still have warm dinner for him: it's an affirmation that he'll be accepted by the people he does care about, just by being himself.
I thought the music and visuals were fantastic, and furthermore the scenes with the Wild Things themselves resonated with me. Their emotional reactions to meaningless things like throwing dirt clods or playing favorites or not stepping on someone's head because it would give them the satisfaction of martyrdom resonate with me, because I've been in circumstances where people have acted like that, and pared down in this way you realize how stupid those situations are.
No, Max does not make things better for the Wild Things. He didn't in the book either. Maybe they became better after he left because they learned how to be comfortable with themselves, maybe they didn't. In the book, they were still the same Wild Things after he left (although to be honest, it really doesn't matter if this movie "stayed true" to the book, for obvious reasons). For me, what happened to them wasn't really even the point. They were just archetypes for Max to learn to cope with, and his version of coping was, "fuck them, I'm just going to be Max." Personally, I like that message.
I understand the whole, "well it's adapted from a kid's book, why isn't it a kid's movie?" logic, but why can't a kid's book be adapted into an adult movie? Especially a kid's book whose original audience is now all grown up? Seriously. It's Eggers and Jonze. You must be joking. I can't even work up enough spite to properly voice how irritating it is that people follow that train of thought. Use your fucking brains, people.
DAVE EGGERS.
SPIKE JONZE. Even knowing the
basic gist of the kinds of movies Jonze has directed and the kinds of books Eggers has written should have been sounding alarm bells off in your hollow little heads. And even if you live under a rock and have NEVER heard of either of these people or their work, maybe all the hype about this movie and how maybe it's NOT good for kids should have been enough? Shouldn't you be reading reviews for the movies you take your small children to anyway instead of mindlessly consuming what is marketed at their target demographic (which leads me to a small tangent, which is that marketing this as a children's movie was misleading, so maybe I should be a little less harsh on some of the thoughtless humans that spawn kids these days)?
And people. Adaptation and Being John Malkovich were
CHARLIE KAUFMAN. Jonze
directed them, he did not write them. This is ostensibly the first movie he's ever co-written as far as I know (I haven't checked
IMDb to be sure). Please, separate the two if you can spare the brain power. They are not the same person. WTWTA is not a continuation of Jonze's typical themes
because the themes in the aforementioned films were not his. Also, if you had ever read Eggers you would realize that he had a very heavy hand in the script, which does not read like a Kaufman script. The cinematic style is obviously comparable, but the form that the content takes is very different. BLARGH end of nerd rage.
I dunno, I didn't quite get the same nihilistic feeling from this movie as so many others did. And I guess if an indie rock musical score = too much hipster, then you're going to go into this movie hating it anyway. I am so fucking tired of someone shouting "HIPSTER!!" and then everyone else around them going "YEAH FUCK THAT." What the fuck do you mean? What kind of defense is that? It's the same as seeing someone reading some obscure hard scifi and going "NERD!!" It's the most poisonous kind of bandwagoning that will actually keep people from experiencing something they may like for fear of being labeled something the cool kids spurn ("cool kids" being in reference to your personal peer group, I don't necessarily mean the societal zeitgeist of "cool"). It leaves a sour taste in my mouth just thinking of people like that.
ANYWAY. All in all, I didn't absolutely lovelovelove the movie, but I liked it a lot and I was very glad I saw it. It was beautiful, striking, thought-provoking and felt very real to me. It reminded me of the book in a lot of ways, but maybe I was just a fucked up kid. Go see it, and if you hate it, you are absolutely welcome to and now you actually have your very own opinion about it! Isn't that magical? Now shut the fuck up already.
