Truly Wild

By DAPHNE LEE

THE Malaysian release date for Where the Wild Things Are keeps getting postponed, but I managed to magically view it (don't ask!) and, two days later, am still stroking my chin and going "Hmmmm..."

I think the trailer has all the best bits. This is true of many movies - the funniest or scariest or most poignant or beautiful (depending on the film's genre) parts are shoved into the one minute teaser and when you watch the actual movie you have to sit through all the yawn-inducing, belief-suspending and mind-numbing stuff in between.

The movie wasn't boring, but I think I had a bit of trouble separating it from the picture book I so love. You can't watch it expecting it to make you feel the way the book does, but it's hard not to expect to experience the same magic - hard for me anyway.

Where the Wild Things Are is a picture book of less that 200 words. Obviously the screenwriters had to add to the basic story in order to make a 100-minute film out of it. I didn't expect them not to, but neither did I expect the movie to leave me so unmoved. Or so disturbed.

There is a certain sort of adult who thinks Where the Wild Things Are (the picture book) is too scary for children, but I have yet to meet a child who is scared by it. Max meets monsters and they are large and freaky looking (sometimes by virtue of their resemblance to regular animals - goats, bulls and cockatoos look rather menacing anyway even when they aren't six feet tall), but Max never loses control. He is in charge from the moment he shouts "Be still!" to the eye-rolling, tooth-gnashing, claw-waving monster mob. Max hypnotises these wild beasties. He subdues them and they bow to him and name him King of the Wild Things.

Children who read the book, or are read it, are never for a moment in doubt as to who's the boss. Even though Max is a bit of a tyrant, the Wild Things worship him. Oh the confidence of the lad! When the monsters declare they will eat him up if he tries to leave them, Max says, simply and firmly, "No" and sails calmly, some may say heartlessly, away.

But Max is not so heartless. The Wild Things, are after all, not real. They are products of his imagination. They represent his anger, his frustration and indignation at his mother trying to make him behave. Max is no longer angry or resentful when he leaves the Wild Things. He misses his mother. He notices, having got over his black mood, that he is hungry. He hasn't abandoned the Wild Things. No doubt he will soon feel the need to visit them again soon.

Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are is not a children's movie. Jonze says he made it to show what it feels like to be a small boy, but it can only be what he remembers feeling at that age, and coloured by what he knows as an adult. Adults may try to make sense of the emotions they experienced as children, but children (of the age the book is usually read to) tend not to analyse their feelings, let alone the feelings of another child. No five-year-old (heck, no 9-year-old I know) is going to watch Wild Things and think "Oooh yeah! Max is really mad at his mum and these monsters symbolise his anger. So, being king of the monsters teaches Max to manage his anger. Cool!"
 
Little children love monsters but I think these monsters have to be unambiguous in nature. You have to know for sure if they're your friends or if they might eat you. They can't be friends who might eat you ... unless there's no doubt you have them completely in your thrall - like Max does, in the book. The monsters in the film are aggressive, violent and temperamental, but decide not to eat Max after he tells them a bunch of lies. Still, the audience is painfully aware that they might kill Max anyway, even if not intentionally.

All through the film, there is a constant sense of danger because Max is at the mercy of the whims and fancies of beasts who smash their own homes for fun and believe that birds enjoy being knocked out of the sky with rocks. At one point, one of the Wild Things rips the arm off another. In what seems, to me, like an unsuccessful attempt to soften the violence of the scene, sawdust pours out of the injured beast's shoulder and it says, "That was my favourite arm." Is the sawdust supposed to also suggest that the Wild Things are toys? I am reminded of the animals of the Hundred Acre Wood, all of whom, apart from Owl and Rabbit, have fluff for brains; as well as the tortured toys in Toy Story. Later, the animal (he is the Wild Thing who looks like a parrot) is shown with a twig as a replacement limb. He seems nonchalant about his loss, yet another Wild Thing (the goat) is in obvious discomfort from a suppurating wound acquired from a vicious game that might be called "stone the infidel" - perhaps children played it during Old Testament times.

Like Jonze, I can only try to recall how I was as a child. What would I have made of this film? I think I would have been fascinated by the Wild Things. They look as strokeable as tigers do, but their horns and teeth, their curved wet mouths warn that you should keep your hands to yourself. I was a sentimental child and so I think I would have gone to pieces over the torn limb, and worried about another scene in which a raccoon is spotted in the slimy belly of one of the monsters. The raccoon looks alive and well but why is he there? Is he a pet? Or is he being digested slowly? These questions would have kept me up nights.

I don't know how 21st century children would take to the film. Older children probably won't think much of the violence, but pre-schoolers may find it bewildering if rather thrilling. It might encourage them to toss their friends in the air or play dodge ball with rocks. But I am beginning to sound like one of those parents who call for the ban of books that contain a single swear word, so I will simply caution parents to watch the film first to decide whether or not it is something your children will enjoy. This is certainly not a movie you should pop into the DVD player and then leave your three-year-old to watch alone.