Where the Wild Things Are [Blu-ray]
by Spike Jonze
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Blu-ray details
Actor: Catherine Keener, Chris Cooper, Lauren Ambrose, Mark Ruffalo, Max RecordsDirector: Spike Jonze
Brand: Warner Brothers
Blu-ray: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), DTS-HD High Res Audio; Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.40:1
Running Time: 101 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: 2010-03-02
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- Condition: New
- Format: Blu-ray
- Color; Dolby; DTS Surround Sound; Subtitled; Widescreen
Blu-ray Reviews of Where the Wild Things Are [Blu-ray]
Blu-ray Review: Where the metaphor, symbolism, and mythology are!
Summary: 5 Stars
Where the Wild Things Are the book is a simple story about a wild boy who misbehaves, is sent to his room without dinner and then imagines a voyage to a land inhabited by wild things. It's so simple you almost wonder why it is that that book has lingered so with parents who bought it for their kids. Those kids themselves who have now grown up and had kids of our own and in turn have given the book to them all love the book too. To me the secret of the books success is the simple story, sparse in nature that speaks to us all. Still, for picture books the words are like a clothesline that the art hangs on. The art in the book is filled with mythical creatures that seem cobbled together from animals we know but still look unfamiliar. It is the art and words together that have kept this book close to all of our hearts for what is now going on it's second and third generation in families that love it. In the art and words we see something familiar but perhaps we do not know what it is. We sense rebellion, chaos, fun, anxiety, longing, redemption, and ultimately the comforts of home and family.
Film is very different from books. Film requires that we are passive and sit back and experience a story that we will be told and shown. We do not control a films pace as we can with a book. Especially in a theater we must sit back and settle in for what we are about to be shown. The conversion of novels to film often times annoys people because we each see a novel in our own minds in our own special way. We have each manufactured a kind of "film" of what we see, feel, and how it speaks to us. Converting books to film requires great care to satisfy a broad swath of people, especially when the source material is so beloved.
Now with graphic novels and picture books the images are laid out for us and the story is told. This is far closer to film and the creators have told and shown us the story. In the case of the book Where the Wild Things Are it is so short it would seem converting it to film could yield nothing more than a short at best. Film has become the great art of our time. It's our theater, combining motion photography, narrative, sound, and music all together into a complete whole. How then can such a short book be converted to a feature length film? Spike Jones knows the secret. Rather than blindly copy the book to screen he has taken basics of what made the book great and beloved, distilled that down to it's essence and then built up upon that.
The book is for kids. But kids live in an adult word and the book speaks to adults too. My parents saw something in the book that spoke to them so they got it for their kids. So the book is for adults and kids. The book as an adult means different things to me than it did as a child. As a boy I could not explain why I liked it. I just did. As an adult it is easier to put into words. To me now, the book communicates the confusing way that childhood can be, the mistakes one can make, the often harsh discipline parents are forced to dole out to the children they so dearly love and how through pure imagination a child can help save themselves and grow. It is about the relationship of the child's world to the adult's world. The book, though specific in story, is about every parent and child. It's also about how kids can experience the world in such a fantastical way. There can be, and is, a lot more to what I feel about the short book by Maurice Sendak. This is because the book does not explain itself. It just is what it is.
The film Spike Jones has made is much the same. It does not explain itself. It just is what it is. A two-hour film must be more sophisticated than a short picture book than can be read in a few minutes. Still the story is pretty much the same. Max gets in trouble, Max gets disciplined, Max goes to wild thing island, and chaos and rumpus occur, Max eventually goes home to loving mom, the end. Huh? What? There is more to the film than that. Spike Jones has thankfully filled the film with symbolism and metaphor and explained little, leaving the film fully open to vast interpretation. I can only hope that this is part of a new trend with films, for the films that tell a simple tale such as this one while using metaphor to allude to more universal truths, can become a beloved film for generations, just as the book did.
For me, the film was about many things, but all the while it is from a child's perspective. Max is an average boy. Not a terrible kid, just a bit lost in an adult world. He has no father figure in the film. It's not explained where or why the father is gone. This is good. This way everyone seeing the film can put their own individual ideas over this and shape it to suit them. Max is lonely, creative, and as most kids do, (and most adults too) he longs for adventure. His mother is busy as is his older sister. Both are trying to get relationships of their own with their peers up and running and have little time for Max. Over a rather minor thing such as frozen corn Max has a tantrum. He has feelings that he cannot control, or explain. The world to him is a place where rivalries for people's affections occur, and huge forces such as the sun eventually exploding are all communicated to him, and not in ways that he can easily understand. So after being smothered in his ice cave, ignored by his family, scared by his teacher, and then forced to eat frozen corn, max flips out. First he flips out in private in his sister's room. He soaks the place with ice water and then destroys a simple creation he had made for her. He then has a moment of regret about his destruction and behavior. Later in a simple animal moment he bites his mom. Biting is something animals do, and babies who do not know any better. Sophisticated humans do not bite. So then his mother reprimands Max but before he is sent to his room like in the book, Max runs away. This is just a simple switch away from the book. Converting the room via computer technology to a forest may have been the obvious choice but the essence of what occurs with Max in the book is that he escapes his reality for another. The essence of this has been preserved. And I think in an effort to have some kind of continuity he escapes the same way he returns, by boat. The journey he takes is that of the mind.
So what happens in the majority of the film, which takes place with the wild things on their island? Just as in the book Max finds them and becomes their king. Here though the film gets more complicated. Each and every wild thing has a name, personality, and are interconnected or disconnected to each other in different ways. To me these wild things most likely represent adults or the adult world that Max is alienated from in the real world. They could also represent different aspects of Max's own personality. Either way he sees them the way a child does. They are often confusing, and make little sense with their complex emotions and inter-competitiveness. In this world Max's lack of understanding matters little and with a simple childlike explanation about his powers, totally lacking of any real logic, he is made king. When he is given his crown and scepter we see human bones amid glowing embers from a fire that has gone out. I suspect these bones represent other children that have similar experiences. Perhaps they represent the end of childhood into adulthood. They could also represent Max's darkest fears. What ever they represent we are not explained it and the wild things say little so this is open to interpretation. I like that lack of explanation because it makes me think about the film.
The wild rumpus starts and all seems well. Although danger is often very close as when Max almost gets squashed by a falling tree, the danger is unseen by the wild things or Max as anything truly threatening. Children are like this. They do not live as cautiously as adults do because they do not have the experience we do. This wild world populated by wild things becomes Max's temporary home. We all know the book and we know he is going to go home eventually. Still, he behaves as if he is there indefinitely, and we forget for a time that he will eventually leave. Max becomes close with Carol and learns that he has a secret place he goes to create. Once there, Max sees a grand model of in ideal world for Carol. Max likes this and they eventually try and make the model a reality. In the end they just wind up making a larger version of the tiny huts the wild things were destroying when he got there. The individual huts may represent our own personal ideas, spaces, personalities and minds. The larger one they all build is more representative of a collective goal. None of us live in vacuum. Each and every one of us must exist on this world with others. We must augment our personal ideas about life to suit those around use we cherish and love, as they too must do for us. Eventually things do not go well. Max starts a war, takes sides, picks favorites, and Alexander gets hurt. Another kind of emotional chaos takes place here. This is not the fun rumpus chaos of childhood but rather more representative of the petty complex emotional disagreements that take place in families, amongst friends, and on a larger stage in the world and with countries. Spike Jones does not come out and say any of this. It's all alluded to. And all the while it is told from the often-confused perspective of a child observing but not entirely understand what it is that is playing out before them. Max does his best to cope with the wild things and make all right but it is not enough.
Finally Carol has a meltdown, like Max did earlier, but this time Douglas looses an arm. It's serious. We all know it's serious, but the characters treat it as if Douglas lost a possession, not a body part. A stick is used to replace the arm. I feel this band-aid stick for an arm replacement shows that the Wild things represent complex adult facades. Max also hides inside the wild thing KW's stomach. This is a wonderful and beautiful scene. Max is protected in the womb like innards of one of the more passive wild things. There is another small animal down there, a raccoon if I remember correctly. It's not a place of death and digestion but rather a sanctuary. He and KW speak to one another while he is in there. KW protects Max from the now raging Carol. This can be interpreted many ways but surely the poignant scene has a mother/birthing aspect to it. Max finally says he is having trouble breathing, just like when a baby is born, before they take their first real breath. Max finally emerges from KW, wet, slimy, and disgusting, just like a baby has been born.
Growing tired of the chaos and also longing for home and food, Max decides to leave the wild things. Carol, who was mad earlier, finds Max's heart note made of sticks at the center of his destroyed model of a perfect world. Having second thoughts about his anger, as parents often do, Carol runs to Max to say goodbye. Not finding the words, Carol starts to howl. Eventually, all the wild things howl goodbye to Max and he howls back. Max is growing up, and he is also leaving something behind. Max goes home to find his mother waiting with warm dinner. There is an understanding that has taken place without using words to muck it up, a connection between child and parent, between childhood and adulthood.
Is there more? Sure there is. The film is a vast trove of metaphor, symbolism, and mythology layered over the simple story we all love. It is not simply just a story for kids and that's it. Kids I suspect will enjoy it, but there is more to it to which can be sifted and mined for countless future viewings. I feel the film is open to interpretation, just like the book. My 8-year-old son enjoyed it greatly, but I know he did not get out of it all that I did. It's a film, like the book, that says more than is just told on the surface. Everything that occurs on the island can be seen as metaphorical or symbolic for more complex adult relationships, facades, worldly issues, and more. All the complexities the film alludes to are as seen as through a child's perspective. The film does not neatly explain itself but is open to interpretation. All my favorite films are like this. I could go on and on. It was a masterpiece.
Description of Where the Wild Things Are [Blu-ray]
"Let the wild rumpus start!" Nine-year-old Max runs away from home and sails across the sea to become king of the land Where the Wild Things Are. King Max rules a wondrous realm of gigantic fuzzy monsters--but being king may not be as carefree as it looks! Filmmaker Spike Jonze directs a magical, visually astonishing film version of Maurice Sendak's celebrated children's classic, starring an amazing cast of screen veterans and featuring young Max Records in a fierce and sensitive performance as Max. Explore the joyous, complicated and wildly imaginative wild rumpus of the time and place we call childhood.Through his handcrafted ode to the trials of childhood, Spike Jonze puts his own unique imprint on Maurice Sendak's enduring classic. In the prologue, 9-year-old Max (Max Records) stomps around the house, feeling neglected. When his mom (Catherine Keener) sends him to bed without supper, Max runs away (something he doesn't do in the book). He finds a boat and sails to a distant land where fuzzy monsters are raising a rumpus in the forest. Since his wolf suit allows him to fit right in, he joins the fray, catching the eye of Carol (James Gandolfini, excellent), who notes, approvingly, "I like the way you destroy stuff. There's a spark to your work that can't be taught." With that, they pronounce the diminutive creature king, hoping he can bring cohesion to their fractured family. After Max comes across Carol's scale-model town, he decides they should build a real one, but the project stalls as Alexander (Paul Dano) and Douglas (Chris Cooper) mope, Judith (Catherine O'Hara) browbeats Ira (Forest Whitaker), and Carol pines for K.W. (Lauren Ambrose), who prefers the company of owls Bob and Terry. Max realizes he has to make a choice: stay with the wild things or return home, where he has to keep his aggressive impulses in check. For readers of Sendak's slim tome, his decision won't come as a surprise, but Jonze ends the story on a lovely grace note. Until that time, the squabbling is a bit much--these monsters never stop talking--but Jonze, cowriter Dave Eggers, the Jim Henson Company, and singer/songwriter Karen O. have gone all-out to re-create the inner world of a child with as much empathy as was mustered for the inner adult world of Jonze's Being John Malkovich. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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