Round Two: WHayes on JDub on "Where The Wild Things Are"
Posted 4/23/2010 by WHayes in Labels: childhood, Dueling Film Reviews, film, friendship, immigration, Kanye West, maurice sendak, we were once a fairytale, WHayes, where the wild things are
Dub, you're onto something when you note how Max's very presence among the wild things is what exacerbates the brewing tensions between them. I further agree that this realization was largely behind his decision to leave for home, as things were rough with his sand-blooded pals at first, but he handled the pressure well. It takes a tough kid to look up into faces that could (and do) swallow him whole, and want to not only befriend them, but be their king. That blind willingness to set aside fear in favor of awe and cooperation is what makes children special; its a quality more adults should share when dealing with their own issues.Yet I have to say that asking, as you do, how these dark, angry tensions could come from a kid misses the point. While I stand by my position that (older) children have some great qualities we could all learn from, they've always had a capacity for cruelty and irrationality borne of fear or the suggestion of inferior difference. They know how to split into "good guys and bad guys." To that end, I'd say it makes perfect sense that bringing an angry and misunderstood Max into a limitless fantasy world would manifest his worst along with his best; it was inevitable. Especially in a world full of freakin' monsters.
As I said last week, the best children's stories are the ones serving as allegories for the struggles adults face as well, and there's nothing more universal to adults than the internal struggle to keep your world at peace despite the warring emotions inside you. Max experiencing the conflict first hand and in a very literal fashion was a pretty brilliant stroke of filmmaking, even if it takes a little while for the message to sink in.
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Before we move off the subject completely, do you like monsters but need more Jonze? Wanna little Kanye with it? Watch this. I've heard it described as "face melting."
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