jordans 13 Wild Rumpus A Where the Wild Things Are

dobso248hf

Max, due to some quick thinking, avoids being eaten by the tribe and instead becomes their king. “Let the wild rumpus start!” he declares [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and everyone’s off and running, punching holes through trees, howling, and leaping into the air [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], before collapsing in a nice big pile to go to sleep. These early scenes capture the magic of Sendak’s story – Max has found a group that’s as lawless and fun-loving as he is.
Jonze has always been a visually inventive director, which made him an obvious choice to adapt Sendak’s book which was short on words but long on iconic imagery. He comes from the world of music videos (his video for the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” remains a classic of the form) and he shares with Michel Gondry (The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) a distaste for post-production special effects – he prefers to work his magic “in camera.” So when Max (Max Records) fights with his mom (Catherine Keener) and sails away to the land of the Wild Things, he meets a clan of creatures as fuzzy and fearsome as Sweetums or the original Jabba the Hutt, whose facial expressions are the only thing added in the editing room.
Thank God for directors like Spike Jonze, who eschew the flat, lifeless (albeit flexible) possibilities of computer generated images and continue to work with Jim Henson’s descendants. The depth, breadth, volume and overall solidity of the Wild Things is the first element to rejoice over in Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s beloved picture book Where the Wild Things Are. It’s unfortunate that the script couldn’t live up to Jonze and Sendak’s vision.
But the magic quickly disappears as the Wild Things take on human characteristics. There’s Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini) who’s angry and destructive, but also plaintive and in need of a hug. Carol misses KW (Lauren Ambrose) who’s spending less time with the group and more with her new friends. There’s Judith (Catherine O’Hara) and Ira (Forest Whitaker), a squabbly, verging-on-Yiddish couple who love each other but can’t get along, and Alexander (Paul Dano), a goat-like creature to whom nobody pays attention.
Some of these creatures can reasonably be said to represent child-like emotions, but Judith and Ira are like no kids you’ve ever met, and the stern [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], sensible Douglas (Chris Cooper) isn’t recognizably juvenile either. What, one wonders, were Jonze and co-screenwriter Dave Eggers trying to say with these Wild Things?
Read on
Film Review: Where The Wild Things Are
Where the Wild Things Are Film Review
Fun Film Trivia from Where The Wild Things Are
Where the Woeful Things Are? Why Are the Wild Things So Sad?
The Place of the Wild Things in Children's Literature and Film
There are aspects of Peter Pan and the Narnia series to the story – there have evidently been other kings before Max, and one assumes there will be more in the future, when Max is too big to make that journey. And there’s a huge debt to The Wizard of Oz: Dorothy goes looking for her heart’s desire and finds it in her own backyard; Max sails away from his mother only to find an island of beings in desperate need of a mom. The sadness and sense of loss that pervades all great children’s literature is here in spades – but some of the exhilaration of Sendak’s book has been lost. Jonze and Eggers have likely created a classic film, but it doesn’t stay true to the mayhem of the classic book that inspired it.