Where the wild things are, things can get wild

I received a DVD of the film Where the Wild Things Are, which is based on the picture book by storytelling genius Maurice Sendak. Its premiere in the Philippines was postponed to give way to the MMFF, and, last I heard it will be shown here in February.

I remember reading the book as a lonely grade school student in a big school, lying flat on my belly on the carpet in the section reserved for preparatory students. While other kids were digging into hardbound Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew collections, I’d sometimes sneak into the kiddie section in the school library, the walls of which were painted with toadstools and frogs and giant beanstalks, to read the pretty books that I still resonated with. As early as then, I already had a feel for my generation’s classics.

In the book, Sendak captures a child’s growing pains and shows a fascinating world that can be created inside the imagination of a child, a world in which the child is king. For the movie, director Spike Jonze successfully took on the difficult task of translating this beloved children’s literature classic for the big screen.

To illustrate the weight of the responsibility Jonze took on, here’s a conversation between me and my younger brother—who is an engineer, I might add, so pardon his lack of literary knowledge.

“Why do the monsters look like funny mascots?” he asked me.

“The look and feel has to stay faithful to the book. Plus, it’s an imaginary world!” I snapped. Or, maybe I rolled my eyes at him.

The thing about Maurice Sendak is that he’s easily one of the best children’s author and illustrator there is.

In Where the Wild Things Are, Max (Max Records) is your typical young boy who feels like an outcast. He builds an igloo, which his teenage sister ignores, starts a snowball fight with his sister’s friends, and get hurt and angry when one of her friends jumps on it and destroys it. Later that night, when his mother doesn’t pay attention to him because her new boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo) is over for dinner, Max loses it. He jumps on the table, screams at the top of his lungs, and bites his mother before running away to his escape. He finds himself riding a boat to a mysterious island populated by huge, cuddly, and scary monsters—all with versions of his own psychological issues.

The wild things are made up of the introverted Alexander (Paul Dano), the quiet Bull (Michael Berry, Jr.), the smart Douglas (Chris Cooper), the distrustful Judith (Catherine O’Hara), the calm Ira (Forest Whitaker), the often-angry Carol (James Gandolfini), and the “missing” KW (Lauren Ambrose). He wins the trust of these monsters, who make him king and asks him to make them a one big happy family again. Of course, even in a child’s imagination, a family can never really be always happy, and Max finds out that his new family is not picnic in the park either.

The beauty of the film Where the Wild Things Are is that it doesn’t back down from showing raw emotions, especially those of a child who hasn’t learned to reign them in. You can see Max screaming his head off; you can see Carol, who is often cuddly and sweet, turn into the monster that he sometimes is.

For everyone who’s ever felt like a horrible piece of crap after doing something horrid to somebody, for those who’ve ever felt guilty for losing his cool or for being unreasonable, for everybody who’s ever wished the earth would just open up and swallow him whole, for everyone who’s ever had to deal with his own personal guilt trip, Where the Wild Things Are will serve as an affirmation that yes, there is a place for you on this beautiful planet.

Max eventually learns that nothing and nobody, including himself, can be perfect, but love always works… Even for monsters.

That, of course, is one of the big lessons in life that will be learned and relearned even after childhood.

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