Where the Wild Things Are is a movie that took me quite a bit by surprise. For a film that I thought was going to be a pretty standard tale of unbridled childhood imagination I found an unexpectedly subtle and thoughtful look at themes of loneliness, desire for understanding and fear of change. Unfortunately these successes make this film feel very adult in it's focus. It is frequently lonely, has no good guys or bad guys and is sometimes frightening to a degree that makes one wonder whether this is really a movie for kids.
The movie follows most of the premise of the children's book where a young boy, Max, is sent to his room for misbehaving during dinner and escapes into a world of wild monsters who appreciate and make him their king. Max eventually becomes homesick and returns to a loving family. The movie takes the liberty of the medium to send Max to an island instead of his room and expand on the personalities of the characters. It develops a whole cast of people and monsters who are struggling for some validation and understanding from those around them. From Max's mom who is struggling with work and trying move on after a divorce from Max's dad to the goat faced monster who is afraid of dangerous games but goes along because everyone ignores his fears. Spike Jonze does a remarkable job of bringing these themes to the front using a minimum of dialog preferring to let the silence and the muppety-CGI facial expressions show what the characters don't have the understanding or vocabulary to do themselves. Max's first meeting with these monsters is as joyous as it is in the book but is almost immediately brought down by the fears and insecurities of the islands inhabitants. It soon becomes clear that each of the monsters represents a different element of Max's own fears and by interacting with them all individually he learns about his own expectations from his family.
If this is sounding particularly deep it's because the movie expects you to figure a lot of it out for yourself. The problem with this is that if you strip out the implied psychoanalysis you are left with a movie that is alternately lonely, frightening and seemingly without resolution. Psychotherapists may be able to fully explain this movie but if you miss that Max is learning about his own life through the troubles of the monsters there is really nothing left. For a movie that is so centred on the imagination and issues of children I wouldn't recommend this movie to kids unless there's someone available to have a long facts of life discussion with afterwards.
The disconnect between the image of this movie and the content aside, I really enjoyed Where the Wild Things Are. It gave a surprisingly deep and mature look at issues that we all face at some point or another and told it in a manner that depended on reading unsaid emotions that not even the characters really understood when they were feeling them. With all this backed up by real costumed actors, and helped with some subtle CG, Where the Wild Things Are is a satisfying experience for anyone who enjoys movies that blend incredible imagination with a mature understanding of itself.
