Word: wild
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What makes Sendak's book so compelling is its grounding effect: Max has a tantrum and in a flight of fancy visits his wild side, but he is pulled back by a belief in parental love to a supper "still hot," balancing the seesaw of fear and comfort. In expanding the story, Jonze (with co-writer Dave Eggers) invents just enough of Max's home life to convey the forces behind his disobedience. The parents of 9-year-old Max (played by Max Records, whose name and performance suggest he was born for this role) have split...
...fundamentally entertainments. The mysterious emotional turmoil and, let's face it, weirdness that every parent deals with on a daily basis can be found in the films of the great Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki but seem to have been deemed off-limits in America. The beauty of Where the Wild Things Are is that for all its fantastical elements, it's a work of realism, an exploration of mood and emotion. Like Sendak's book, which on initial publication was considered too edgy and creepy by some critics and libraries, the movie is dark, but it is perhaps even more...
...existential angst that drives Max to that fateful eruption with his mother. Here, instead of being sent to his room, he flees the house and goes racing through the neighborhood, baying like a wolf. He finds a boat and sets sail, finally arriving in the land of the wild things...
...Jonze unleashes his considerable creativity. The beasts are recognizable from Sendak's pages, but Jonze gives them names and distinct personalities that connect to aspects of Max's psyche and to the people he loves. (Freud would adore this movie.) They are vast, feathered, horned, clawed, beaked and definitely wild - irrational and dangerous, even when showing affection - and Jonze uses their threatening bulk as well as their capacity for cruelty to remind us that Max's taming of them is only temporary. For any child, it is near impossible to stay king of anything, even in fantasy. (Read "Box-Office...
...Forest Whitaker). Animation would have been a far easier choice here, but Jonze's instinct toward verisimilitude was astute. By setting his story in real landscapes, he respects and heightens the peculiarity and tension of Max's experience, whether he's shivering in his wet wolf suit or running wild with the beasts in the forest...