Where the Wild Things Are...
Always need some time when I watch a movie like Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are. Just want to be sure, you know, about what I think and what I feel about the movie. I shall need some preliminary remarks: I’m not from North America, and, before watching the trailer of the movie adapted from Maurice Sendak’s book, I had never even heard of it - I remember my childhood being characterized instead by the fantastic journeys of Jules Verne.
Yet, since the opening titles of the movie, I realized how much the wild things were significant – “an institution”, thanks Lumpycam! - for anybody else in the theatre. Cheers and applause, and a continuous giggle surrounded me as the first titles appeared on the screen. And then laughter and awes, intent and ravished silence, and a sense of true and magically light-hearted involvement rose up as the wild things made all the spectators – yes, me too! – join them running, jumping, screaming, feeling happy and sad; experiencing a whole range of emotions all together as only when we were kids we were able to do, while forgetting everything else throughout the whole movie. As I said, I have never read Maurice Sendak’s book, yet the movie Where the Wild Things Are, and the children’s book itself, I suppose, whose intense meanings lie in our subjective sensitivity, have that magic only few other great stories (and movies) have, that ability to become part of our imagination that makes them absolutely timeless, so that they will accompany us for the rest of our lives.
Visually speaking, the sparkle of the movie lies on Spike Jonze’s fresh and light approach to the story, and on the simple and even somewhat gross, yet beautifully real, appearance of the wild things. Whereas creatures’ reality appears to be a too easy job for today’s available visual effects, however the director keeps their “simple” look, as the wild things seem belonging to the same visionary world of movies like Wolfgang Petersen’s Neverending Story (1984) – do you remember the funny looking white dragon Falkor with its big eyes and huge mouth? – and Jim Henson’s stunning Labyrinth (1986). The reference is not accidental. The wild things are as cute and funny, and belong to a part of our being we should never forget. Feel like everything would be better. That is.
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I can't wait to see this one! Like many kids in North America, this book was an institution of my childhood.