Month: October 2009

My wife and I took our youngest son to see Where the Wild Things Are last week.  I loved this movie. My wife didn’t like it.  My son, who is non-verbal, only enjoyed parts of it.

For me, Spike Jonze captured the inner life of the introspective child beautifully.  The starkness of the landscape around the monsters’ home — the somewhat gloomy forest, the jagged surf-pounded cliffs, the sepia shoreline –reflects the interior emotional ecosystem of the introvert: rough, severe, yet often beautiful in its wildness.  With the “monster” characters themselves, Jonze and his actors vividly capture how the boy Max’s anxieties project into adulthood.

Introspective children grow into introspective adults.    Each of the monsters is a piece of the boy who will grow into the boyish man.    James Gandolfini’s characterization of the monster Carol simmers with the confusion, anger, and subdued bafflement of every man who has ever awoken to the sudden realization that his youth is truly, finally, and irrevocably over.  “Why are things working out this way?  This isn’t what I was promised!,” Carol seems to say, though he doesn’t so much say it as show it through his pleading voice.  Despite Max’s promises,  there is nothing Max can do to make it all better.  He can only offer hope and a new perspective for a short while.

At the end of the film, Max leaves the monsters behind on the island, and sails back home to the warm embrace of his mother, who is his only family.  It’s tempting to think that Max will remain in his mother’s embrace forever, that he will never return to the monsters, or if he does return, that the monsters will have sorted everything out so that nothing is left but the rumpus.  I’m not so sure.  I think Max will travel between home and the monsters for the rest of his life.