It's adorable.

It's tragic.

It is the single most perfect encapsulation of that particular corner of the human experience that belongs to nine-year-old boys--with all the boundless energy and cataclysmic displays of frustrated sorrow that go with it. It's a "kid's movie", but it's also straight-up art, in a way that movies like Pixar's "Up" could only take tentative steps toward.

So-called "kids' movies" have a standard gamut of emotions they've learned how to exploit safely: excitement, creation, fear, etc. You've got the kid riding the dragon going 'wahoo!'; you've got the kid laughing as he throws up a big ol' castle; you've got the kid hiding from Bad Guys, with big shiny eyes in the dark under the table.

Where The Wild Things are dares to go at Anger, and Melancholy. In one scene, Max talks to the Wild Things about the amazing fortress they'll build, and how he'll make everyone happy as their king.

"What about the loneliness?" asks James Gandolfini, as Carol.

"Yeah." agrees another, quietly--as though they've finally got to the heart of things. "Will you keep the sadness away?"

Where The Wild Things Are examines how the struggle to understand the problems of those you love...and how the struggle to understand the metaphysical rules and personal relationships of a world far larger than you.....that is, the struggles of both a parent and of a child....are, essentially, the same.

Childhood, points out Wild Things, is a lot of extreme emotions; a lot of little existential crises; a lot of Big Things, that all arguments revolve around, and all experiences tangentially brush the top of. You feel alone, you feel frightened, you feel angry--and you don't yet have the life experience to understand that loneliness, or that fright, or that anger; you don't have the words to express what you feel. Everything is growing slowly left of center...and...

...well, Carol says it best:

"You know how it feels when all your teeth are falling out really slowly ... and then they're all spaced really far apart ... and then one day you wake up, and you don’t have any teeth anymore?"





Yeah.





There's probably a lot more to be said--the wonderful score, the top-notch voice acting, the absolutely mind-blowing special effects, so effortless you forget to regard them for what they are...

...the quiet terror of a snow fort collapsing around you...

...that magical space between blankets, in half-light...

...and the angle on your mother's toes, as you lay on the floor beneath her desk: trying, for the world, to understand.







It's an amazing movie, which goes about its work without a lick of self-consciousness and no need to explain, and I've barely scratched the surface, and you really need to go and goddamn see it.