Where the wild things are (2009)

I was eagerly looking forward to seeing Where the wild things are. I was not disappointed. The audience was a mix of kids with their parents and ... somewhat older kids. Where the wild things are is not brilliant in one sense. It was brilliant in every sense. We are familiar with Spike Jonze's tender surrealism from Being John Malcovitch. This is a similarly gorgeous disorientation of neurotic imagination. The film opens with scenes of Max, nine years old, building a snow igloo. A series of events follow, involving careless siblings, a well-meaning but absent mother, and a growling, furious kid. Max runs away. He runs away to another world, where he meets a pack of clumsy, hairy beasts. The world of the beasts turn out to be no less problematic than the ordinary world.

Jonze's film is a moving exploration of being afraid of losing the ones with whom we are close. Max, the main character, the child, embodies our desire to fix things, to make everything OK, to try to eliminate conflicts that we know are perhaps insoluble. In contrast to another reviewer (from HBL) I would not say that Where the wild things are portrays fear in too unspecific way. The point is rather that fear often takes that form (which means different things). You don't need explanations - an absent father/specific conflicts - to understand Max's predicament. This is the naked grappling with other people. Jonze has a good eye for small-mindedness and pathetic self-indulgence - but also for the infinite sadness of helplessness.

Stylistically, Jonze has created a very original world. The images are robust and dreamy at the same time. The monsters he has created are treated with due seriousness (they are not some 3D gag for young & adult kids). Of course, the film has many things in common with other US indie movies of the 00's. Sun-drenched, glowing cinematography, a certain way of augmenting the narrative with whimsy&sad music, the slow pace, deadpan acting (the kid! claire fischer!). But Where the wild things are is not good because it is cute (but it is). It is good because it is a simple, but not sugary, film about very difficult things.