Max just needs some attention. His older sister ignores him so he engages her friends in a snowball fight. Max has a merry time until one of his sister’s friends smashes his snow fort, with him in it. Max’s mom spends a little time with him when she gets home from work, but then her boyfriend arrives and she ignores Max. In retaliation, Max stands on the counter in the kitchen and demands, “Woman, feed me.” In the ensuing struggle, Max accidentally on purpose bites his mother. When she yells at him for it, he runs out of the house and into a neighboring wood. From there, he sails through a very large body of water in a tiny boat and arrives on an island.
Max climbs the cliffs toward a fire and sees the wild things. One of them is smashing small spherical structures that we later find out are their homes. This wild thing, named Carol, is upset that another wild thing, KW, has left the group. The wild things threaten to eat Max, but quickly make him their king when he tells them that he has magical powers. He promises to help them build a world in which they are all always happy, where there is no fighting and, especially, no loneliness.
At first, everything goes well. Mostly. Max and the wild things have a great old time running through the forest, uprooting trees, and sleeping all together in a huge pile. Carol shows Max a secret cave in which Carol has created a miniature of a world in which everything he wants happens. Max enjoys having the monsters look to him for advice and orders. He feels a sense of belonging and control that he doesn’t have at home with his mom and sister. And, he gets to do lots of howling.
Unfortunately for Max, that is an impossible feat. As the film demonstrates, people and their emotions are complex. There are no simple solutions. Eventually, Max realizes this and returns home to his mom. He realizes that she loves him and that she is doing his best for him, as Max tried to do for the wild things. He realizes that emotions are complex and part of life. And he’s OK with that.
I went to see Where the Wild Things Are partly because I enjoyed the book as a child (who didn’t) and partly because the scenery in the film looked breathtaking. I was not disappointed. Every scene in the film, particularly the ones that include the wild things, takes place in a beautiful area. The filmmakers employ water, forests, deserts, and caves with great effect. The scenes in the desert in particular were gorgeous.
Also, the music in the movie is used to mirror Max’s emotions. Fear, excitement, anger, anxiousness, and many more are all filtered into the viewers’ ears. It amazed me how well the music is incorporated here.
On a final note, Where the Wild Things Are is based on a widely read children’s book, but the film is not simply for children. In fact, children may find it too complex to fully understand because they, like Max, do not yet know how to identify and handle emotions. They will, however, love the more raucous scenes. The children in the theater I was in loved a dirt clod war scene in particular.
When you go to the theater to see Where the Wild Things Are, don’t be surprised if you leave the theater a bit melancholy. I sure did. Go ahead. Howl.
