‘Where The Wild Things Are’ a masterpiece

By Matthew Jackson

The opening images of “Where the Wild Things Are” are among the more exciting and intensely revelatory things you’re likely to see at the movies for a while: a young boy, dressed head to toe in a white wolf suit, scampering through a house in hot pursuit of a small dog, snarling and roaring like ... well, like a wild thing.

It’s scary, funny, energetic and strangely violent, and it all feels very, very right.

It’s a sequence most family filmmakers wouldn’t touch, but director Spike Jonze, best known for making killer movies out of killer scripts by the brilliant Charlie Kaufman (“Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation” are their two great collaborations), is not most family filmmakers.

In fact, “family filmmaker,” and indeed any other label you might seek to tack on him, wouldn’t really apply to Jonze. He’s one of those rare Hollywood wonders that manages to drift almost mystically between cool (many of his music videos are legendary) and complex, between profoundly silly (he’s one of the minds behind “Jackass”) and just plain profound.

So, take the mind who once put an entire roomful of John Malkoviches on screen (many of them in dresses), pair him with one of the screenwriting world’s rising stars (Dave Eggers, whose “Away We Go” was one of this year’s critical darlings), and give them one of the most beloved and gloriously odd children’s books of all time, and the result is an epic, gorgeous and at times achingly tender cinematic journey into the soul of a misunderstood boy.

The original story, written by the great Maurice Sendak, is far too short for any film: a little boy named Max is sent to his room for making mischief around his house, and his imagination takes him away to a land filled with monsters where he is made king.

With Sendak’s blessing, Jonze and Eggers have significantly expanded the tale, beginning with Max’s tribulations involving a very depressing teacher, his mother’s new boyfriend, and his sister’s callous friends. Perhaps to get attention, or perhaps to flee from a world that doesn’t understand him, Max picks a fight with his mother (Catherine Keener) and flees into the night, eventually discovering a little sailboat that takes him across a vast sea and onto an island where the Wild Things lurk.

To further enhance the tale, Jonze and Eggers have furnished each of Sendak’s creatures with names and distinct personalities. When Max first finds the Wild Things, their leader Carol (James Gandolfini) is busy destroying the huts each of the creatures have built. The reason: his girlfriend, KW (Lauren Ambrose) has left him. Max, watching from the shadows, decides to join in, and his mischievous spirit is welcomed by Carol. But when the other Wild Things – bitter Judith (Catherine O’Hara), needy Alexander (Paul Dano), dim-witted Ira (Forest Whitaker) and follower Douglas (Chris Cooper) – threaten to eat him, Max must convince them that they can’t. Why? Because he’s a king with magical powers, of course, and he’s going to make their whole world wonderful again.

What follows is a remarkably odd, funny and touching journey as Max (played by newcomer Max Records) sets out on a quest to build a massive fortress where the Wild Things will live and “sleep together in a real pile.” Along the way, everyone’s insecurities, from Carol’s need to be loved to Max’s need to be understood, are explored, and in the end Jonze and Eggers remind us, as the film’s trailer says, that inside each of us is a wild thing, whether we look like it or not.

The film’s look, from the Wild Things to the landscape, is almost completely morphed from Sendak’s original work. Everything here is dark, grimy and rough-edged, as though this idealistic land of monsters has already worked its way through some kind of postmodern apocalypse (there’s even a desert that, as Carol points out, used to be mountains). The characters have the same silhouettes and the same basic biological makeup, but inside they’re far from the simple merrymakers of the original book. These are deeply flawed, deeply vulnerable beings, appearing at times more childlike even than Max, and each riding their own emotional rollercoaster. All the fun and adventure of a film for kids is here, but at the core of it all is a collection of souls all vying for a kind of complete happiness, “a place where only the things you want to have happen would happen.”

All of this plays out through the dreamy, often chaotic eye of Jonze’s camera. Even when things are at their weirdest, he somehow finds a way to make it look real, from the giant ball of twigs that the Wild Things begin to build in their landscape to a pair of joke-telling owls. In spite of intense emotional pauses, the kinetic energy with which Jonze moves the flick along is nothing short of magical. You’re never looking at you’re watch, you’re never wondering how long you’ve been sitting, and you’re not even thinking of leaving. Though he’s always had a quirky, often disjointed storytelling style, Jonze’s inherent oddness seems the perfect fit here against the backdrop of Sendak’s fanciful escapist tale.

Though the look is far and away from Sendak’s imaginings, it’s the characters that truly make this film a breed of its own. Jonze assembles a stellar cast filled with legends and underrated up and comers to give each of the Wild Things their own heartbreaking and hilarious voice. Gandolfini carries the film on his awesome shoulders, giving an emotional weight to the horned and striped Carol, who makes up the center of the crumbling Wild Things universe. The real joy to watch is Records, who emerges on the silver screen like a boy possessed, creating moments of absolute warmth, fear and kindness that even the most seasoned actors could envy. Watch this kid, moviegoers. He’s headed for great things.

Even with all of this talent, all of this brilliance, there still might be some naysayers, but I say if they didn’t like it, they just didn’t get it, probably because they forgot how absolutely terrifying it is to be a kid. If you can admire nothing else about this movie (and there’s plenty to admire), you must admit at least that it has managed to do the near-impossible: capture the pure chaos, the pure potential, the pure wildness of being a child.

Matt’s Call: I don’t want to speak too soon, and we’ve got two months and change to go before the final verdict, but this might be the best thing I’ve seen all year. Take your kids, take your Mom, just go see it.