Within minutes of the movie, three children beside me were escorted by their parents out of the theatre. Max, the main character, was abusing a cat. The first thing movie goers will notice in this film is that this may not be a movie for children under the age of Max. That is, unless your children are viciously acting destructive despite having the cognitive skills to know better, then they won’t be able to relate to Max in the movie. Such “wild” characteristics usually develop around eight years old. The Max in this film is of a different maturity than the one found in Maurice Sendak’s book. Although the film’s version of Max is not on the pathway of adolescence, he’s right at the footstep looking ahead. This becomes evident as he tries but fails to make any bonds with young teens, including his older sister. In one scene, the wild Max is injured by an even wilder teenage boy who jumps on the ‘igloo’ that Max is hiding under. It was at this scene that I noticed two other children were escorted out of the theatre by their parents. And sure enough, the adult themes began appearing unbeknownst to children. This was when I began to enjoy the film.

There are some irrational emotions that both children and adults share that are difficult to resolve such as jealousy, possessiveness, greed, cowardice, and depression. These are also a few of the main emotions that each of the ‘Wild Thing’ characters in the film embody. I probably won’t be the only viewer who will re-read the original story to see if I ‘missed something’ from when I read it as a child. Let me tell you now that you haven’t. Spike Jonze has introduced fresh themes to Sendak’s two original ones: Sadness and loneliness. Albeit, whether Jonze’s themes are merely subsets of sadness and loneliness is debatable. Regardless, Spike Jonze doesn't have answers on how to resolve such problems as jealousy and desperation but rather he approaches them as most adults do. In fact, the only characters labeled as “wise” are two disoriented owls who repeat a meaningless mantra that sounds like “meeep,” much like the empty messages of modern self-proclaimed gurus. Neither of the 'wise owls' have answers to common depression. Instead, Jonze takes a more realistic approach and acknowledges the persistence of such emotions in our lives and then moves on with it. Similarly, adults don’t know why we get depressed but we try not to bog ourselves down with it. It’s just there. And that is the main angle that both Sendak's book and Jonze's film can agree with. We learnt it as children and now we’re revisiting it, with Jonze, on how we ought to deal with existentialism: It’s just there. So move on.



Beyond the Themes

“The sun is going to blow up one day,” the characters repeat in the film (But not in the book). And within that quote Spike Jonze creates a sombre atmosphere. This is also complemented with a strong music set by Karen O. Although she is more commonly known for her music with the ‘Yeah Yeah Yeahs,’ her solo music itself is less upbeat but still just as pleasing. The environment, landscape and Jim Henson's suits combined with the CGI effects, reflect the unique artwork from Sendak’s original book quite well.

The only confusion I had was in regards to the actual weather of the ‘real world.’ At certain parts of the film we see that there’s a blanket of snow outside and at other parts Max is shown running through a field of long grass. This made a bit more sense to me afterwards when I re-visited Sendak’s book and found that Max had originally been on the ‘Wild Things’ island for an entire year despite there never being any snow illustrations. Still though, the abrupt changes in weather patterns creates more disunity in the story than is necessary. Nevertheless, this is a minor point as the maturity of the film is what makes this common children story worth revisiting as an adult.

By the end of the film, I saw even a few adults’ eyes had teared up- Through my own misty eyes. Why? Well, as one character sums it up: "The sun is going to blow up. But before that humans will probably have eliminated themselves through warfare, disease, global warming..." That's a concept both adults and their children can feel both scared and sad about. Let's face it and move on.