The Misuses of Enchantment
It’s obviously absurd to critically review a movie based on a trailer, but Suderman started it and the “Where the Wild Things Are” trailer is throwing up so many red flags that this bull has no choice but to charge.
I do not object in principle to taking a children’s book and making a movie for grownups out of it. That can be done very well indeed – well enough that, in spite of becoming a movie for grownups, it’s still a great movie for children. Gene Wilder’s performance as Willy Wonka, for example, is absolutely heartbreaking – and yes, that radically changes the story (the original book was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory while the movie is “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”, and that change is neither accidental nor incidental), but it changes it by recentering it, not by being false to it.
A “Where the Wild Things Are” emotionally centered on the mother – or, more daringly, on the wild things themselves – could be interesting, and could work on its own terms. I can imagine other, perhaps less-interesting ways of approaching the book from the perspective of nostalgia that could also work as works of art, without being false to the original – there’s a terrible risk you might wind up casting Robin Williams if you went that route, but I think one could avoid that fate with proper care.
But the work must be respected. This is not a book about a lonely sad-eyed child who needs to find a place where he is loved and accepted and where he can learn to cut loose. Max is a wild thing! His mother is pulling her hair out he’s so wild! He’s not “acting out” because of “issues” – he’s wild! And he likes being wild! And he dreams of breaking free of the confines of home and being with his fellow wild-things!
Can you imagine the Max of Spike Jonz’s movie taming the wild things with the trick of staring into each of their yellow eyes without blinking once? Can you imagine them being frightened of him, and naming him king of all wild things? Can you imagine him sending them all to bed without their supper?
And forget the sad-eyed kid – what’s the deal with the sad-eyed wild things? I remember the wild things from the book. As I recall, they rolled their terrible eyes and gnashed their terrible teeth and showed their terrible claws. They didn’t even grin – they leered. They were wild things!
(BTW: the faces of the wild things were purportedly based on Sendak’s childhood recollections of his uncles and aunts from the old country – huge honkers, bad teeth, hands all over you. They were supposed to be scary. Sendak was scared of them!)
Oh, and one final point. Max of Where the Wild Things Are – the book – is a wild boy chafing against the civilizing (and entirely reasonable) constraints of female authority. Is this really a story with no resonance at all for a contemporary filmmaker in touch with a contemporary audience? So that he had to go and make a movie (as it appears) about reconnecting with his own hurt and abandoned inner child? Really?
Little boys like the book for exactly the reasons Noah explains. Do little girls like it as much?
— Steve Sailer · Mar 27, 08:03 PM · #
Thank you so much for writing this, Noah. I couldn’t agree more—-the trailer for [i]Wild Things[/i] made me dread the coming release.
Also: [i]Jumanji[/i] was the film you chose to make your point about Robin Williams? Wouldn’t [i]Pan[/i] have been more appropriate?
— JS Bangs · Mar 27, 08:10 PM · #
Testify, brother Noah!
— Chris Floyd · Mar 27, 08:15 PM · #
Amen, amen, and amen!
“…and it was still hot.”
— Bryan · Mar 27, 08:56 PM · #
Is this really a story with no resonance at all for a contemporary filmmaker in touch with a contemporary audience?
Isn’t that every Judd Apatow movie?
— Freddie · Mar 27, 09:15 PM · #
I like the boat, in the book and the movie both.
— Tony Comstock · Mar 27, 09:44 PM · #
JS Bangs: never saw “Pan” but saw, and basically liked, “Jumanji” hence that’s the movie I referenced.
Freddie: Apatow’s making movies about (and for) man-boys. Maybe that’s a symptom of exactly what I’m talking about, maybe not, but it’s not an example of it. Man-boys are not boys.
— Noah Millman · Mar 27, 10:43 PM · #
Um, did you ever make it till the end of the book? He wants to be somewhere where he is loved. And he goes home, and his dinner is still warm. Not so wild after all!
— Gentle Reader · Mar 28, 12:26 AM · #
Dude! Spoiler alert. I was only halfway through!
— Dylan · Mar 29, 11:57 PM · #
Psh. I really don’t see what you all see in this trailer…
And Bangs? I think you meant Hook, one of Spielberg’s lamest movies, with Williams as a grown-up Peter Pan, yes?
— Joseph · Mar 31, 06:09 PM · #