There's One In All of Us

When I saw the trailer for Where The Wild Things Are about seven months ago, I was blown away. From that point until the movies debut on October 18th, I was biting my nails in anticipation. Really, I don't remember caring that much about a film's release in at last a few years. First of all, this book, which was originally written in 1963 by the great Maurice Sendak was a pretty high on my list of favorite books as a kid. I remember feeling like the book was written about me. Max's trouble maker attitude and his world consuming imagination were both a huge part of my personality as a child. Well actually I guess they still are. So anyway, I had a lot of emotional connection with the story as it was. Second of all, Spike Jonze? The director I remember for Being John Malkovich and Adaptation was going to be the creative godhead behind the re-imagining of one of America's most beloved children's books. I'm not saying that I didn't have absolute faith in Spike's creative potential, not to mention his absolutely stunning take on cinematography, but this is someone that made a music video of a bunch of children running around baring the twisted face of Richard D. James summoning demon figures, killing and causing general havoc. I guess I'm just saying that at times I really didn't know what to think about the combination...and here's the video.



As I was saying, from the beginning it was pretty hard to not be curious about the direction the movie was being taken in, and admittedly the anticipation was not always the most optimistic. Was the film going to stay true the kind of innocence that is portrayed in the original book? Or was it going to go somewhere darker? Or god forbid, was it going to go somewhere unnecessary? It turns out it did go somewhere darker, much fucking darker. But at every point that the movie went to a dark place, it went there for a reason that was absolutely vital to understanding the character that you where seeing the world through. In fact, a big part of what I loved so much about the film was that it forced you to feel with Max(the main character). It forced you to see the world of the 'wild things' through his eyes. Because the world that you are looking at when you see the film is just that. It is his imagination and as such it's a world that reflects the hopes, fears and passions of this character. I am not really sure about what this means concerning whether or not the movie would be appropriate for kids. But Maurice Sendak told the parents that were concerned about the movie being "to scary" to "go to hell." So my immediate instinct is to go with him on this.

I am aware I'm not speaking from experience considering (fortunately) that I am not myself a parent. But it's pretty obvious that as a culture we have dumbed down what is appropriate for kids to be exposed to, to a pretty extreme point. The whole cycle needs to stop. So I say take your kid to see a movie that may be a little scary. Rather that then filling a kid's head with whatever retarded crap Disney is promoting.



Also, the parts of the movie that could be even loosely referred to as scary where really only about a minute grand total. So stop being so sensitive and stop ruining your child's range of experiences. Protecting your child's fragile little mind is not a good enough reason to do that.

At the end of the day Spike Jonze never even said that it was intended for children anyway. He said he wanted to make a movie "about childhood," not for children. The film just fell into place that way because of the original subject matter. But the original writer not only chose to endorse this filmmaker after turning down literally scores of others for the same pitch, but also even after its release praised it. It's beautiful and artistically pure in a way that I have not seen in a very long time, and no matter who you are you should see it.