I’m in no mood to write a review, so this is a scattershot meditation on Spike Jonze’ film that came out today. Freya and I couldn’t wait any more to see it, so we braved the midnight showing here in Nashville.
This film is a child-view examination of the life that we live in constant tension. The wild things are ferocious and more than capable of crushing or eating Max, but they also want him to lead them and all have their own problems that they think he solve.
There is no attempt to simplify life or hollywoodize a moral out of a wandering story, rather the film is simply concerned with what does it mean to be a child, what does it mean to have emotions that are stronger than we care to admit, what can imagination and escape do for us, and yet to simplify the film to these questions offends the power and beauty of it. Spike, and co-writer Dave Eggers have attempted to remove the wisdom we get as adults and simply capture the volatility and wonder of being nine years old, of trying to understand why good things happen and why bad things happen.
The film is beautiful. That’s really all I have to say about it right now. I can’t wait to see it again, to enter back into the world where the wild things are, to see the reign of King Max, who will be a good king. This movie is devoid of nostalgia about childhood, and in stripping that away, we remember the world as it was before we built up our defenses and coping mechanisms. And that world, as scary and volatile as it was, is worth revisiting.
The cinematography of WTWTA was impressive, no doubt, but it seemed to be missing a “spark” of some kind… maybe it was just too low energy from beginning to end for me (or at least after the first ten minutes)
I think of all the complains I’ve heard about WTWTA, low energy is not one of them. There’s the wild rumpus, the building of the fort, the dirt clod war, when Carol chases Max… the movie is nothing but action filled.