40 thoughts on “Decent Films Doings: Where the Wild Things Are”
I have to say, I was one of those just not that blown away by Wild Things as a kid. I haven’t read it in a very long time, perhaps I should pick it up again.
I do think that part of my impression as a second grader was a response to adults (teachers) who absolutely gushed over the book as the Greatest Thing Ever. It seemed to me at the time that the book was also presented as a kind of primer on The Right Way To Use Your Imagination, as if me and my school friends didn’t have our heads teeming with perfectly good daydreams of our own. Not that this was Sendak’s idea.
That’s one reason I never liked folk music as a kid, and had to approach it again as an adult, working my way backward through my biases. A lot of my teachers were young folkie wannabes, and they couldn’t understand why any healthy youngster wouldn’t want to sing chorus after chorus of Michael Row The Boat Ashore or Puff, The Magic Dragon as they strummed a guitar. Maybe I would have had a different response to M.T.A. or Whiskey In The Jar, but that kind of thing would have been frowned on, I suppose.
The movie sounds intriguing. Maybe it will be an opportunity to work backward through my Wild Things bias.
I loved WTWTA when I was little– it was a gift from one of my mom’s 4-H kids, who also baby-sat us. I thought the boy was a bit of a twit, but what boys aren’t when you’re four? ;^p
It’s pretty. I might even decorate my baby’s room with some drawings from it– but I don’t think I’ll go see the movie, unless Elf wishes it.
Great review SDG!
I loved WTWTA when I was a kid. It struck a major chord in me. I knew as a kid that the biggest reason I loved it so much is that there was “something waiting” (as you put it in your review) beyond the pages. I remember just looking at the pictures for quite some time, looking for something else, something that the story wasn’t telling in the words & pictures. It seemed to me that the something else was not necessarily bigger than the story Sendak told but . . . deeper – although I would not have used that term back then. I would check the book out from the local library (a musty 100+ year old building that kept children’s books on the third floor, up the stairs, down the hall & around the corner) so many times I think I was the only name on the card at one point! I practically memorized every word & pen-stroke & would peer at each page, looking past what was there because I was sure Max’s world with the Wild Things was there to be found if I looked deep enough. There was great mystery to be found in that world for an imaginative 4 year old. I vividly remember my sister (who is 12 years older) reading it to me, sitting with her on my Dad’s chair.
WTWTA is the one book I can credit for preparing me for work from writers like Tolkien & Lewis. It’s what, to this day, informs my meager attempts to write & create, to look deeper. I guess I can even say that it caused me to look deeper into faith, as well, to really begin to live my faith as an adult.
I’m very much looking forward to seeing the movie tonight!
Tim J, thought of you when I read this review by a friend of mine who just took his daughter to see the movie — and who cites his youthful love of Sendak’s book as well as Harold and the Purple Crayon. 🙂
Link’s not working for me. 🙁
Mighty thoughty of you, though. Thanks.
link fixed.
Celebrate the release of Sendak’s classic book as a feature film with Rolling Stone’s 1976 profile of the revered children’s book author.
And his subsequent 2008 concerns/revelations as published by the New York Times.
“SDJ, if you weren’t a movie critic, would Sendak’s comment to parents who might think it is too scary, influence your decision to take your kids and whether or not to support the film?”
No.
For one thing, Mark Twain has said and written some rude and even blasphemous things against our Faith. That wouldn’t affect my decision to let my daughter read Twain’s Joan of Arc, or even to let my son read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
For another, you have to try to imagine where Sendak’s response is coming from. His first book, In the Night Kitchen, has been banned in many schools because the little boy parades naked through the kitchen. He’s probably been harrassed about the scariness of WTWTA for nearly half a century now. He’s understandably sick of the whole issue. Hyper-concerned social worry warts and ultra-involved helicopter parents worrying about how children are going to be traumatized and develop complexes have been a pain in his rear for most of his life. I’m not excusing his response, but I do understand it, and I don’t find it so shocking and offensive that it would give me pause about seeing or recommending the movie.
In general, the only question I ask in regard to patronizing or supporting a movie is: Is it a good movie? In extreme circumstances the question may demand a larger context (e.g., in regard to The Golden Compass, where the movie is tied into a potential film franchise as well as the whole series of books, not just the first). Or if Sendak were, like, a member of some hate group and were going to channel his earnings directly into something evil, that would obviously be an issue. A rude response to a query about the scariness of the movie doesn’t nearly rise to the level of such an issue for me.
Thanks.
I believe it was Mark Twain who had to eventually let his wife proof his letters before he sent them. He was crass and rude at times.
I didn’t realize Sendak had been receiving criticism regarding the book and how scary it could be.
“Maurice Sendak’s Thin Skin – Why is he still so bent about a few negative words psychologist Bruno Bettelheim wrote in 1969?” — by Jack Shafer
Jack Shafer makes good points, as he often does.
For all the good points he may make, many may find Shafer’s “because Sendak has an appetite for controversy” answer to be itself just another thin skin for Sendak, not answering the core question “But why is he like that?”
His reaction is making a little more sense now, not that it is right.
We were never a WTWTA fan, but we did want to check out the movie.
Wonderful review and spot on comments here.Can’t wait to see it.
Confidential to Terry: The topic of this combox is not rubbing our noses in Sendak’s issues. Stop it now.
SDG, if you choose to (mis)characterize my appreciation of the movie, the story and its origins as “rubbing our noses in Sendak’s issues”, censor away. That would be your issue. The fact is the movie and story are not apart from “Sendak’s issues”, and without “Sendak’s issues”, there’d be no story and no movie. You wrote in your review, “Watching the film, at times I wished for something closer to Sendak, something simpler and less talky,” but apparently, you meant closer to your limited understanding of Sendak’s book, not Sendak? Sendak is not a book, nor is he “simpler and less talky”. He is a man, a complex and outspoken man of 81 years. If you want to “put the book aside [and the book’s author aside, and the universe and God aside too?] and watch the film as a Thing unto itself” as you fantasied doing in your review, that’s your thing and you’re welcome to it, but the movie is not a “Thing unto itself” and thus not truly appreciated as such.
(* I do not speak of you or Mr. Sendak as having “issues” if by “issues” you mean something pathological or bad. As with you, I view Mr. Sendak with wonder and interest and a heart that loves him dearly. I may ask, as the Church asks, that if you’re not ready to give a favorable interpretation to my statements, that you inquire from me with patience, rather than condemn my statements. Thank you and God bless.)
Terry, while I don’t “condemn” your statements, if you claim or were to claim that your posts I recently censored were intended only to express “appreciation of the movie, the story and its origins” and that you neither intended nor foresaw the discomfort and distaste that they would cause readers as perhaps the primary effect of your posting, I would find such a claim implausible enough to doubt without worry of failing in my duty to render as favorable an interpretation as possible of your statements — a duty I take seriously enough that you needn’t feel it necessary to remind me of it periodically. Beyond that, though, whatever your intentions, I think I have accurately characterized the actual effect of your posts, and I make the only decision I can based on the situation as I perceive it.
When I speak of something “closer to Sendak,” I am of course employing metonymy. The book (that is, [the] Sendak, as opposed to [the] Jonze) is a great deal simpler and less talky than the movie.
The critical issues around viewing an adapted film in relation to its source material or sui generis are not to be resolved simply by saying “the movie is not a ‘Thing unto itself’ and thus not truly appreciated as such.” There is at least a critical case to be made that any work, even an adapted work, is a thing unto itself, and to appreciate it as such is not only an essential component of criticism and appreciation, but is in fact the essential critical endeavor. Indeed, judging from what I’ve read of Mr. Sendak’s comments about the movie as well as Mr. Jonze’s, it is the way they would both prefer that the film be approached.
Yes, you “think”, you “perceive”. Doesn’t generally everyone? And there’s plenty of people who think they dutifully think/perceive/characterize/judge/etc. accurately too. Of course, the Church teaches that the duty involves “let him ask how the other understands it”. Did I miss your questions to me? But you needn’t my permission to censor as you please. I respect your choices as yours to make.
“Primary effect”, with its numerous, perhaps countless meanings, is itself a matter of opinion. Some might want to judge it immediately, others over time, perhaps even over a lifetime, others in terms of gut impact, others based on a reasoned impact, etc. Some would say that every effect can be seen as “primary” depending on the perspective. Some would say those who feel “discomfort and distaste” as the primary effect are those specially invited to discover the mystery of Mr. Sendak’s work. I needn’t venture an opinion of my own on the subject, but wil mention that a fellow writer and friend of Mr. Sendak says he believes that the positive appreciation of the shock factor and its connection to and use by Mr. Sendak is basic to the appreciation of Mr. Sendak’s work as a children’s writer and its connection to children (of all ages), even to the development of understanding and wisdom, both of Mr. Sendak and of those who feel shocked.
Anyway, I said nothing about “the critical issue” being resolved “simply by saying” anything. And like I said, if you want to believe the movie is a “Thing unto itself”, for whatever reason, be my guest. I welcome variety of opinion and approach, whether it’s yours, Mr. Sendak’s, Mr Jonze’s, Mr. Sendak’s good friends, etc. I enjoy what everyone has to say.
I never understood why people made such a big deal about this book. My reaction to it now was the exact same as when the school librarian was singing its praises in elementary school: who cares? To each his own, I guess. Did the author pay off school librarians maybe?
“Did I miss your questions to me?”
Terry, with affection, of the set of questions put to you in this forum, particularly questions about your motives, I doubt very much whether the ratio of questions that you have answered straight to questions that you have treated the way a cat does a mouse is high enough to warrant confidence that a question put to you is likely to shed additional light on whatever conclusions one might otherwise reach by his own lights. Perhaps we must be content to “think” and “perceive” as best we can. As you have often pointed out in one form or another, your posts speak for themselves.
“I never understood why people made such a big deal about this book. My reaction to it now was the exact same as when the school librarian was singing its praises in elementary school: who cares? To each his own, I guess. Did the author pay off school librarians maybe?”
It is a divisive book, and a divisive film. Many who love the book love it unreservedly, and no payoffs are necessary to explain it. Others it leaves cold. Both reactions are, I think, understandable.
The film is more complex, and I think fewer people will love it unreservedly, but it seems to be making fans. Many people are reacting to it as a parable of divorce and the broken family, like E.T. and The Spiderwick Chronicles, which I think is quite right.
I have never read the book (i missed it as a child and I suspect it would not have held my attention, anyway) nor do I plan to see the movie. I do wonder, however, if this book/movie deserves to be called an enduring classic. From what I’ve read, online, it seems to belongs to the Prodigal Son category of children’s allegory, I suspect:
child does wrong or is feeling abandoned or “wild”,
child goes to imaginary country where he can live out his fantasies,
child discovers he is homesick or comes to realize his actions were wrong
there really is no place like home.
Alice in wonderland and The Wizard of Oz (at least the movie) are better examples. These are enduring classics because they do not merely make comments on universal experiences, but because they also are analytical in how they describe those experiences and relate them to a wider context – they are able to project the experiences into the adult world and thus are able to connect the feelings of isolation as children with the feeling of isolation as adults and create a true universal analysis. They are like biblical commentaries on the Prodigal Son. Where the Wild Things are is more like a Morality Play version of the Prodigal Son. It is a classic, but does it really expand the art form? It seems to be a cross between James Thurber and Walt Disney.
The Child, Max, has a metanoia. He comes to realize that he is being punished out of love or rather, that he needs love and being contrary is not the way to get it. What I find interesting is that dinner is waiting for him when he “returns home”. While it is a nice story, it seems to be inconsistent parenting and a harbinger of the Doctor Spock school of parenting. Parents do have the right to relent when punishment is given and they stand waiting for their children’s return from “over there”, but we have no idea why this is a good idea in this case.
How many children have grown up, in modern years, to have their parents constantly backing down when they discipline their children? Does Max really learn to love his mother better or to reform? While this is clearly the intent of the book, from my experience with children, this incident, in itself, would probably not be a life-changing experience. I give Max three days before he is into mischief, again. On the other hand, this book could be considered the first clinical description of ADHD for children.
Or maybe not. In any case, although I have not read the book, I have read books in the same genre. Either I (as well as my classmates) had a deprived childhood from an intellectual/emotional/developmental standpoint or the Caldecott Award really has a limited ability to describe what is best in the field.
My Monday morning curmudgeonly take. Note: I did not say this is not an engaging book/film, but I suspect that Charles Schultz could have done (and, in fact, did do) a better job with the same material.
Maybe I’m just being contrary to be contrary, today. I don’t know. Perhaps I need to take a course in children’s literature. Perhaps I need to stop commenting on things I haven’t read and have no idea about what I’m saying. My apologies for being a little pepper in the discussion. Pepper goes well with chicken. Is that dinner I smell?
The Wild Chicken
First, regarding the book: I remember reading it to younger brothers long ago, and appreciating the art, but thinking the story was a bit silly. I’ve never read it to my children, though I did read “In the Night Kitchen,” which they thought was weird.
Regarding the review: I was suprised that the grade was so positive — based on what you wrote, I have no real desire to see the movie or to take my children to see it. I have the feeling that the children might find it confusing, and mom & dad just a bit too “modern” regarding family dynamics.
Also, this has been bugging me for a while. Maybe I’m just crazy (and have a bad memory) but the scene in “Ratatouille” in which the chef peeks out the kitchen window, then turns and flattens himself against the door reminds me of “In the Night Kitchen.” I haven’t seen the book in years, but it popped into my head the first time I saw the movie.
Thanks for your reviews, Steve! We rarely watch one you haven’t graded a C+ or higher, and we’ve not been disappointed.
“Regarding the review: I was suprised that the grade was so positive — based on what you wrote, I have no real desire to see the movie or to take my children to see it.”
Perfect. Then I’m doing my job. My job isn’t to tell readers whether or not I liked a movie. It is, in part, to try to give readers a sense of what a movie is like so that they can decide for themselves whether or not it’s something they want to see. Of course I can only show readers the movie through my eyes — that’s what gives the review its juice, its point of view — but always I hope the movie itself comes through clearly enough that readers can get a sense of watching the movie through their own eyes.
In fact, nearly 20 years ago I told Lawrence Toppman, critic of the Charlotte Observer, that I liked reading his reviews for precisely this reason: I could read a positive review of his and project that I wouldn’t like the movie, and likewise read a negative review and have my interest piqued. Nothing is less useful to me than a review that only emotes about how the critic felt about the movie and leaves me no more able to gauge my own interest in the movie than I was before.
“I have the feeling that the children might find it confusing, and mom & dad just a bit too “modern” regarding family dynamics.”
Could be. I appreciate a particular sort of family film that honestly acknowledges the emotional consequences of broken families. The Spiderwick Chronicles and E.T. are also in this category for me.
Re. In the Night Kitchen — whoa. I have a good visual memory and often pick up on things like this, but this time Night Kitchen is buried too deeply in the fog of youth for me to have useful memories of the image you reference.
I appreciate a particular sort of family film that honestly acknowledges the emotional consequences of broken families
I’ve been asked to ask you (by a party I won’t name), “Do you mean family film that honestly acknowledges SOME BUT NOT ALL emotional consequences of broken families, lest it not be considered ‘family film’? And if the acknowledgment of consequences is not complete, is it truly honest?”
First, regarding the book: I remember reading it to younger brothers long ago, and appreciating the art, but thinking the story was a bit silly.
Hehe, a possibly telling reaction: my first thought was “What story?”
Usually a story has reasons for what happens– so far as I can remember, stuff just happens in WTWTA. Not a whole lot on why, other than the kid being sent to his room.
I might also wonder, if the movie “honestly acknowledges the emotional consequences of broken families”, is it clear that events claimed as “consequences of broken families” are not actually consequences of something else, like ADHD, early 21st century American culture, school teachers, religion, movies like WTWTA, etc… or more broadly as you said in your review “messiness of the world”? Even Beaver Cleaver would get into trouble, run away from home and enjoy mom’s meal and a smile at the end. Leave It To Beaver didn’t honestly acknowledge the messiness of unbroken families. It was prepared for audiences of its day. As was WTWTA.
“Hehe, a possibly telling reaction: my first thought was “What story?” Usually a story has reasons for what happens– so far as I can remember, stuff just happens in WTWTA. Not a whole lot on why, other than the kid being sent to his room.”
Sendak’s illustrations are so mesmerizing that they can distract one from the poetic quality of those nine meandering sentences. Poetry has reasons for what it does and where it goes, but they are often not the same sorts of reasons as prose stories.
“I’ve been asked to ask you (by a party I won’t name), “Do you mean family film that honestly acknowledges SOME BUT NOT ALL emotional consequences of broken families, lest it not be considered ‘family film’? And if the acknowledgment of consequences is not complete, is it truly honest?”
Here is my response to your friend: All art is selection. A story is about certain events and not others; a picture ends where the frame begins. Godard said “cinema is truth 24 frames a second, every cut is a lie.” But the camera only tells the truth about where the director chose to point the camera; it doesn’t tell us anything about where he didn’t, except by omission.
If selection, and therefore omission, is inherently dishonest, then we cannot speak of truth or honesty in art. This is not a use of language I find helpful or interesting.
I find it more helpful and interesting to say that selection, and therefore art, can be truthful or untruthful, honest or dishonest. But it is the truth and honesty or untruth and dishonesty of art. Many critical interpretations are possible, though not all are equally plausible.
“Leave It To Beaver didn’t honestly acknowledge the messiness of unbroken families. It was prepared for audiences of its day. As was WTWTA.”
The rubric “prepared for audiences of its day” seems to me another unhelpful generalization that describes everything and says nothing. Audiences can be pandered to or challenged, encouraged or troubled, by work that is equally “prepared for” them.
Rather than “Leave It to Beaver,” a comparison I find more helpful would be to broken family films like Zathura and Night at the Museum. These are films that are “prepared for audiences of their day” in a way that I find, if not necessarily dishonest, at least not honest about a particular sort of truth that many today would rather not face. There is a tidiness to these films’ approaches that I find objectionably false to the messiness of the world.
Other films, such as E.T., The Spiderwick Chronicles and Up, are more honest about this sort of truth and truer in many ways to the messiness of the world. This is the sort of honesty that I find in WTWTA.
SDG, your response to me seems to express an objection to a “tidiness” in films that does not recognize the messiness of the world, calling such tidiness “objectionably false” and “not honest”. That might seem to suggest that your previous statement that WTWTA “honestly acknowledges the emotional consequences of broken families” is in regard to it recognizing the messiness of the world as (in part) consequential to broken families. However, could you express or clarify your view as to what else the film recognizes as a consequence of broken families? Specifically, do you also view the film as “honest about a particular sort of truth that many today would rather not face,” namely, that in fact good and wonderful things (can and often do) consequently emerge from broken families? You close your review by saying it’s “a film broken-hearted over the messiness of the world,” which might seem to suggest you don’t believe it recognizes the good and wonderful things that consequently emerge from broken families, yet you also say the film is “beautiful”.
Terry,
I like Stitch’s line at the emotional climax of Disney’s Lilo & Stitch, a movie that I would put in the category of messily honest broken family films. (“Are we a broken family?” Lilo asks sadly at one point, and her older sister Nani quickly replies, “No! …well, maybe a little. …maybe a lot”).
Stitch’s climactic line: “This is my family. I found it all by myself. It is little, and broken … but still good. Yes, still good.”
Good and wonderful things can certainly be found in all families, broken as well as intact. Brokenness, too, is not to be equated to divorce; all divorces result in broken families, but not all broken families result from divorces. Legally intact marriages and physical cohabitation can coexist with varying degrees of brokenness, and where such brokenness exists, legal divorce and/or physical separation does not always worsen the brokenness. At times legal divorce and/or physical separation can make room for more good and wonderful things, though it cannot eliminate brokenness.
All of this belongs to the complexities that I subsume under the rubric of “messiness.” Messiness does not entail a denial of good and wonderful things. It does entail a candid acknowledgment of brokenness. The “neatness” I object to in the likes of Zathura and Night at the Museum lies not in the embracing of good and wonderful things, but in the cheerful minimizing of brokenness.
I don’t know if that answers your question, but it’s what occurred to me in response to your question.
Well, let’s see… though you talk of good and wonderful things being “found” in broken families along with an acknowledgement of “brokenness”, that’s not quite an acknowledgement that good and wonderful things can also in fact be a consequence of broken families, is it? As such and unless an absence of denial about something is what constitutes “honest acknowledgement” about that thing, then what you’re calling “honest acknowledgment” of “messiness” and “brokenness” (that you’ve described as not entailing a denial of good and wonderful things found in [or emerging as a consequence of] broken families) would not quite be “honest acknowledgment about a particular sort of truth that many today would rather not face, namely, that in fact good and wonderful things (can and often do) consequently emerge from broken families,” would it?
I mean, even as God is the ultimate cause of good emerging from evil or from broken families or whatever, that does not preclude good and wonderful things being a consequence of broken families, in the sense of “consequence” meaning “an act or instance of following something as an effect, result, or outcome”. For example, imprisonment can be a consequence of crime even though the crime itself does not force the imprisonment but for the involvement of a police force and judicial system, and we can thus say “because you broke the law, you may be imprisoned as a consequence.” Likewise, good and wonderful things can be the consequence of broken families, because of God, and we can also say, “because the family was broken, good and wonderful things may emerge as a consequence.”
Of course, the language used might also be, “because you broke the law, you may ‘find’ yourself imprisoned,” and to the extent that such a “finding” honestly acknowledges that imprisonment is a consequence, then in that same sense the fact that “good and wonderful things can certainly be found in all families, broken as well as intact”, such would be an honest acknowledgment that good and wonderful things can be the consequence of broken families.
Sorry, T, my eyes are glazing over, and you know I likes me some convoluted sentences.
If you’re looking for explicit confirmation that bad things, including the breaking of families, can be the cause of good and beautiful things, well, of course. (I already said “At times legal divorce and/or physical separation can make room for more good and wonderful things, though it cannot eliminate brokenness”; that wasn’t explicit enough?)
Anything, however odious and harmful, can have good and beautiful consequences. A child of rape is no less good or beautiful for being the consequence of a heinous act.
The breaking of a family is always a bad thing. Like any other bad thing, it can have good consequences.
Was there something else you wanted?
The LORD is my shepherd; there is nothing I lack.
SDG: “Could be. I appreciate a particular sort of family film that honestly acknowledges the emotional consequences of broken families. The Spiderwick Chronicles and E.T. are also in this category for me.”
Thanks for your comment! I appreciate what you’re saying and yes, find it true that while the plot can get a lot of oomph from a “broken family” story line, it must also be honest enough to avoid the “sitcom” mentality of fixing everything by the last reel. It’s great when it works: we enjoyed “Spiderwick” both as books and the movie, and the older kids “got” the dad/monster reference.
On the other hand, it’s so refreshing and rare when a modern movie for kids doesn’t have a missing parent theme that we get a little excited when something like “The Incredibles” or even “Coraliine” comes along!
it’s interesting how polarizing this movie is, some people say WTWTA is the best movie of the year while others say it’s the worst; i tend to lean toward the latter opinion just because it didn’t really have a plot
I have to say, I was one of those just not that blown away by Wild Things as a kid. I haven’t read it in a very long time, perhaps I should pick it up again.
I do think that part of my impression as a second grader was a response to adults (teachers) who absolutely gushed over the book as the Greatest Thing Ever. It seemed to me at the time that the book was also presented as a kind of primer on The Right Way To Use Your Imagination, as if me and my school friends didn’t have our heads teeming with perfectly good daydreams of our own. Not that this was Sendak’s idea.
That’s one reason I never liked folk music as a kid, and had to approach it again as an adult, working my way backward through my biases. A lot of my teachers were young folkie wannabes, and they couldn’t understand why any healthy youngster wouldn’t want to sing chorus after chorus of Michael Row The Boat Ashore or Puff, The Magic Dragon as they strummed a guitar. Maybe I would have had a different response to M.T.A. or Whiskey In The Jar, but that kind of thing would have been frowned on, I suppose.
The movie sounds intriguing. Maybe it will be an opportunity to work backward through my Wild Things bias.
I loved WTWTA when I was little– it was a gift from one of my mom’s 4-H kids, who also baby-sat us. I thought the boy was a bit of a twit, but what boys aren’t when you’re four? ;^p
It’s pretty. I might even decorate my baby’s room with some drawings from it– but I don’t think I’ll go see the movie, unless Elf wishes it.
Great review SDG!
I loved WTWTA when I was a kid. It struck a major chord in me. I knew as a kid that the biggest reason I loved it so much is that there was “something waiting” (as you put it in your review) beyond the pages. I remember just looking at the pictures for quite some time, looking for something else, something that the story wasn’t telling in the words & pictures. It seemed to me that the something else was not necessarily bigger than the story Sendak told but . . . deeper – although I would not have used that term back then. I would check the book out from the local library (a musty 100+ year old building that kept children’s books on the third floor, up the stairs, down the hall & around the corner) so many times I think I was the only name on the card at one point! I practically memorized every word & pen-stroke & would peer at each page, looking past what was there because I was sure Max’s world with the Wild Things was there to be found if I looked deep enough. There was great mystery to be found in that world for an imaginative 4 year old. I vividly remember my sister (who is 12 years older) reading it to me, sitting with her on my Dad’s chair.
WTWTA is the one book I can credit for preparing me for work from writers like Tolkien & Lewis. It’s what, to this day, informs my meager attempts to write & create, to look deeper. I guess I can even say that it caused me to look deeper into faith, as well, to really begin to live my faith as an adult.
I’m very much looking forward to seeing the movie tonight!
Tim J, thought of you when I read this review by a friend of mine who just took his daughter to see the movie — and who cites his youthful love of Sendak’s book as well as Harold and the Purple Crayon. 🙂
Link’s not working for me. 🙁
Mighty thoughty of you, though. Thanks.
link fixed.
Celebrate the release of Sendak’s classic book as a feature film with Rolling Stone’s 1976 profile of the revered children’s book author.
And his subsequent 2008 concerns/revelations as published by the New York Times.
SDJ, if you weren’t a movie critic, would Sendak’s comment to parents who might think it is too scary, influence your decision to take your kids and whether or not to support the film?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfmoms/detail?entry_id=49362&tsp=1
No.
For one thing, Mark Twain has said and written some rude and even blasphemous things against our Faith. That wouldn’t affect my decision to let my daughter read Twain’s Joan of Arc, or even to let my son read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
For another, you have to try to imagine where Sendak’s response is coming from. His first book, In the Night Kitchen, has been banned in many schools because the little boy parades naked through the kitchen. He’s probably been harrassed about the scariness of WTWTA for nearly half a century now. He’s understandably sick of the whole issue. Hyper-concerned social worry warts and ultra-involved helicopter parents worrying about how children are going to be traumatized and develop complexes have been a pain in his rear for most of his life. I’m not excusing his response, but I do understand it, and I don’t find it so shocking and offensive that it would give me pause about seeing or recommending the movie.
In general, the only question I ask in regard to patronizing or supporting a movie is: Is it a good movie? In extreme circumstances the question may demand a larger context (e.g., in regard to The Golden Compass, where the movie is tied into a potential film franchise as well as the whole series of books, not just the first). Or if Sendak were, like, a member of some hate group and were going to channel his earnings directly into something evil, that would obviously be an issue. A rude response to a query about the scariness of the movie doesn’t nearly rise to the level of such an issue for me.
Thanks.
I believe it was Mark Twain who had to eventually let his wife proof his letters before he sent them. He was crass and rude at times.
I didn’t realize Sendak had been receiving criticism regarding the book and how scary it could be.
“Maurice Sendak’s Thin Skin – Why is he still so bent about a few negative words psychologist Bruno Bettelheim wrote in 1969?” — by Jack Shafer
Jack Shafer makes good points, as he often does.
For all the good points he may make, many may find Shafer’s “because Sendak has an appetite for controversy” answer to be itself just another thin skin for Sendak, not answering the core question “But why is he like that?”
His reaction is making a little more sense now, not that it is right.
We were never a WTWTA fan, but we did want to check out the movie.
Say goodnight, Terry.
With love.
Wonderful review and spot on comments here.Can’t wait to see it.
Confidential to Terry: The topic of this combox is not rubbing our noses in Sendak’s issues. Stop it now.
SDG, if you choose to (mis)characterize my appreciation of the movie, the story and its origins as “rubbing our noses in Sendak’s issues”, censor away. That would be your issue. The fact is the movie and story are not apart from “Sendak’s issues”, and without “Sendak’s issues”, there’d be no story and no movie. You wrote in your review, “Watching the film, at times I wished for something closer to Sendak, something simpler and less talky,” but apparently, you meant closer to your limited understanding of Sendak’s book, not Sendak? Sendak is not a book, nor is he “simpler and less talky”. He is a man, a complex and outspoken man of 81 years. If you want to “put the book aside [and the book’s author aside, and the universe and God aside too?] and watch the film as a Thing unto itself” as you fantasied doing in your review, that’s your thing and you’re welcome to it, but the movie is not a “Thing unto itself” and thus not truly appreciated as such.
(* I do not speak of you or Mr. Sendak as having “issues” if by “issues” you mean something pathological or bad. As with you, I view Mr. Sendak with wonder and interest and a heart that loves him dearly. I may ask, as the Church asks, that if you’re not ready to give a favorable interpretation to my statements, that you inquire from me with patience, rather than condemn my statements. Thank you and God bless.)
Terry, while I don’t “condemn” your statements, if you claim or were to claim that your posts I recently censored were intended only to express “appreciation of the movie, the story and its origins” and that you neither intended nor foresaw the discomfort and distaste that they would cause readers as perhaps the primary effect of your posting, I would find such a claim implausible enough to doubt without worry of failing in my duty to render as favorable an interpretation as possible of your statements — a duty I take seriously enough that you needn’t feel it necessary to remind me of it periodically. Beyond that, though, whatever your intentions, I think I have accurately characterized the actual effect of your posts, and I make the only decision I can based on the situation as I perceive it.
When I speak of something “closer to Sendak,” I am of course employing metonymy. The book (that is, [the] Sendak, as opposed to [the] Jonze) is a great deal simpler and less talky than the movie.
The critical issues around viewing an adapted film in relation to its source material or sui generis are not to be resolved simply by saying “the movie is not a ‘Thing unto itself’ and thus not truly appreciated as such.” There is at least a critical case to be made that any work, even an adapted work, is a thing unto itself, and to appreciate it as such is not only an essential component of criticism and appreciation, but is in fact the essential critical endeavor. Indeed, judging from what I’ve read of Mr. Sendak’s comments about the movie as well as Mr. Jonze’s, it is the way they would both prefer that the film be approached.
Yes, you “think”, you “perceive”. Doesn’t generally everyone? And there’s plenty of people who think they dutifully think/perceive/characterize/judge/etc. accurately too. Of course, the Church teaches that the duty involves “let him ask how the other understands it”. Did I miss your questions to me? But you needn’t my permission to censor as you please. I respect your choices as yours to make.
“Primary effect”, with its numerous, perhaps countless meanings, is itself a matter of opinion. Some might want to judge it immediately, others over time, perhaps even over a lifetime, others in terms of gut impact, others based on a reasoned impact, etc. Some would say that every effect can be seen as “primary” depending on the perspective. Some would say those who feel “discomfort and distaste” as the primary effect are those specially invited to discover the mystery of Mr. Sendak’s work. I needn’t venture an opinion of my own on the subject, but wil mention that a fellow writer and friend of Mr. Sendak says he believes that the positive appreciation of the shock factor and its connection to and use by Mr. Sendak is basic to the appreciation of Mr. Sendak’s work as a children’s writer and its connection to children (of all ages), even to the development of understanding and wisdom, both of Mr. Sendak and of those who feel shocked.
Anyway, I said nothing about “the critical issue” being resolved “simply by saying” anything. And like I said, if you want to believe the movie is a “Thing unto itself”, for whatever reason, be my guest. I welcome variety of opinion and approach, whether it’s yours, Mr. Sendak’s, Mr Jonze’s, Mr. Sendak’s good friends, etc. I enjoy what everyone has to say.
I never understood why people made such a big deal about this book. My reaction to it now was the exact same as when the school librarian was singing its praises in elementary school: who cares? To each his own, I guess. Did the author pay off school librarians maybe?
Terry, with affection, of the set of questions put to you in this forum, particularly questions about your motives, I doubt very much whether the ratio of questions that you have answered straight to questions that you have treated the way a cat does a mouse is high enough to warrant confidence that a question put to you is likely to shed additional light on whatever conclusions one might otherwise reach by his own lights. Perhaps we must be content to “think” and “perceive” as best we can. As you have often pointed out in one form or another, your posts speak for themselves.
It is a divisive book, and a divisive film. Many who love the book love it unreservedly, and no payoffs are necessary to explain it. Others it leaves cold. Both reactions are, I think, understandable.
The film is more complex, and I think fewer people will love it unreservedly, but it seems to be making fans. Many people are reacting to it as a parable of divorce and the broken family, like E.T. and The Spiderwick Chronicles, which I think is quite right.
I have never read the book (i missed it as a child and I suspect it would not have held my attention, anyway) nor do I plan to see the movie. I do wonder, however, if this book/movie deserves to be called an enduring classic. From what I’ve read, online, it seems to belongs to the Prodigal Son category of children’s allegory, I suspect:
child does wrong or is feeling abandoned or “wild”,
child goes to imaginary country where he can live out his fantasies,
child discovers he is homesick or comes to realize his actions were wrong
there really is no place like home.
Alice in wonderland and The Wizard of Oz (at least the movie) are better examples. These are enduring classics because they do not merely make comments on universal experiences, but because they also are analytical in how they describe those experiences and relate them to a wider context – they are able to project the experiences into the adult world and thus are able to connect the feelings of isolation as children with the feeling of isolation as adults and create a true universal analysis. They are like biblical commentaries on the Prodigal Son. Where the Wild Things are is more like a Morality Play version of the Prodigal Son. It is a classic, but does it really expand the art form? It seems to be a cross between James Thurber and Walt Disney.
The Child, Max, has a metanoia. He comes to realize that he is being punished out of love or rather, that he needs love and being contrary is not the way to get it. What I find interesting is that dinner is waiting for him when he “returns home”. While it is a nice story, it seems to be inconsistent parenting and a harbinger of the Doctor Spock school of parenting. Parents do have the right to relent when punishment is given and they stand waiting for their children’s return from “over there”, but we have no idea why this is a good idea in this case.
How many children have grown up, in modern years, to have their parents constantly backing down when they discipline their children? Does Max really learn to love his mother better or to reform? While this is clearly the intent of the book, from my experience with children, this incident, in itself, would probably not be a life-changing experience. I give Max three days before he is into mischief, again. On the other hand, this book could be considered the first clinical description of ADHD for children.
Or maybe not. In any case, although I have not read the book, I have read books in the same genre. Either I (as well as my classmates) had a deprived childhood from an intellectual/emotional/developmental standpoint or the Caldecott Award really has a limited ability to describe what is best in the field.
My Monday morning curmudgeonly take. Note: I did not say this is not an engaging book/film, but I suspect that Charles Schultz could have done (and, in fact, did do) a better job with the same material.
Maybe I’m just being contrary to be contrary, today. I don’t know. Perhaps I need to take a course in children’s literature. Perhaps I need to stop commenting on things I haven’t read and have no idea about what I’m saying. My apologies for being a little pepper in the discussion. Pepper goes well with chicken. Is that dinner I smell?
The Wild Chicken
First, regarding the book: I remember reading it to younger brothers long ago, and appreciating the art, but thinking the story was a bit silly. I’ve never read it to my children, though I did read “In the Night Kitchen,” which they thought was weird.
Regarding the review: I was suprised that the grade was so positive — based on what you wrote, I have no real desire to see the movie or to take my children to see it. I have the feeling that the children might find it confusing, and mom & dad just a bit too “modern” regarding family dynamics.
Also, this has been bugging me for a while. Maybe I’m just crazy (and have a bad memory) but the scene in “Ratatouille” in which the chef peeks out the kitchen window, then turns and flattens himself against the door reminds me of “In the Night Kitchen.” I haven’t seen the book in years, but it popped into my head the first time I saw the movie.
Thanks for your reviews, Steve! We rarely watch one you haven’t graded a C+ or higher, and we’ve not been disappointed.
Perfect. Then I’m doing my job. My job isn’t to tell readers whether or not I liked a movie. It is, in part, to try to give readers a sense of what a movie is like so that they can decide for themselves whether or not it’s something they want to see. Of course I can only show readers the movie through my eyes — that’s what gives the review its juice, its point of view — but always I hope the movie itself comes through clearly enough that readers can get a sense of watching the movie through their own eyes.
In fact, nearly 20 years ago I told Lawrence Toppman, critic of the Charlotte Observer, that I liked reading his reviews for precisely this reason: I could read a positive review of his and project that I wouldn’t like the movie, and likewise read a negative review and have my interest piqued. Nothing is less useful to me than a review that only emotes about how the critic felt about the movie and leaves me no more able to gauge my own interest in the movie than I was before.
Could be. I appreciate a particular sort of family film that honestly acknowledges the emotional consequences of broken families. The Spiderwick Chronicles and E.T. are also in this category for me.
Re. In the Night Kitchen — whoa. I have a good visual memory and often pick up on things like this, but this time Night Kitchen is buried too deeply in the fog of youth for me to have useful memories of the image you reference.
I’ve been asked to ask you (by a party I won’t name), “Do you mean family film that honestly acknowledges SOME BUT NOT ALL emotional consequences of broken families, lest it not be considered ‘family film’? And if the acknowledgment of consequences is not complete, is it truly honest?”
First, regarding the book: I remember reading it to younger brothers long ago, and appreciating the art, but thinking the story was a bit silly.
Hehe, a possibly telling reaction: my first thought was “What story?”
Usually a story has reasons for what happens– so far as I can remember, stuff just happens in WTWTA. Not a whole lot on why, other than the kid being sent to his room.
I might also wonder, if the movie “honestly acknowledges the emotional consequences of broken families”, is it clear that events claimed as “consequences of broken families” are not actually consequences of something else, like ADHD, early 21st century American culture, school teachers, religion, movies like WTWTA, etc… or more broadly as you said in your review “messiness of the world”? Even Beaver Cleaver would get into trouble, run away from home and enjoy mom’s meal and a smile at the end. Leave It To Beaver didn’t honestly acknowledge the messiness of unbroken families. It was prepared for audiences of its day. As was WTWTA.
Sendak’s illustrations are so mesmerizing that they can distract one from the poetic quality of those nine meandering sentences. Poetry has reasons for what it does and where it goes, but they are often not the same sorts of reasons as prose stories.
Here is my response to your friend: All art is selection. A story is about certain events and not others; a picture ends where the frame begins. Godard said “cinema is truth 24 frames a second, every cut is a lie.” But the camera only tells the truth about where the director chose to point the camera; it doesn’t tell us anything about where he didn’t, except by omission.
If selection, and therefore omission, is inherently dishonest, then we cannot speak of truth or honesty in art. This is not a use of language I find helpful or interesting.
I find it more helpful and interesting to say that selection, and therefore art, can be truthful or untruthful, honest or dishonest. But it is the truth and honesty or untruth and dishonesty of art. Many critical interpretations are possible, though not all are equally plausible.
The rubric “prepared for audiences of its day” seems to me another unhelpful generalization that describes everything and says nothing. Audiences can be pandered to or challenged, encouraged or troubled, by work that is equally “prepared for” them.
Rather than “Leave It to Beaver,” a comparison I find more helpful would be to broken family films like Zathura and Night at the Museum. These are films that are “prepared for audiences of their day” in a way that I find, if not necessarily dishonest, at least not honest about a particular sort of truth that many today would rather not face. There is a tidiness to these films’ approaches that I find objectionably false to the messiness of the world.
Other films, such as E.T., The Spiderwick Chronicles and Up, are more honest about this sort of truth and truer in many ways to the messiness of the world. This is the sort of honesty that I find in WTWTA.
SDG, your response to me seems to express an objection to a “tidiness” in films that does not recognize the messiness of the world, calling such tidiness “objectionably false” and “not honest”. That might seem to suggest that your previous statement that WTWTA “honestly acknowledges the emotional consequences of broken families” is in regard to it recognizing the messiness of the world as (in part) consequential to broken families. However, could you express or clarify your view as to what else the film recognizes as a consequence of broken families? Specifically, do you also view the film as “honest about a particular sort of truth that many today would rather not face,” namely, that in fact good and wonderful things (can and often do) consequently emerge from broken families? You close your review by saying it’s “a film broken-hearted over the messiness of the world,” which might seem to suggest you don’t believe it recognizes the good and wonderful things that consequently emerge from broken families, yet you also say the film is “beautiful”.
Terry,
I like Stitch’s line at the emotional climax of Disney’s Lilo & Stitch, a movie that I would put in the category of messily honest broken family films. (“Are we a broken family?” Lilo asks sadly at one point, and her older sister Nani quickly replies, “No! …well, maybe a little. …maybe a lot”).
Stitch’s climactic line: “This is my family. I found it all by myself. It is little, and broken … but still good. Yes, still good.”
Good and wonderful things can certainly be found in all families, broken as well as intact. Brokenness, too, is not to be equated to divorce; all divorces result in broken families, but not all broken families result from divorces. Legally intact marriages and physical cohabitation can coexist with varying degrees of brokenness, and where such brokenness exists, legal divorce and/or physical separation does not always worsen the brokenness. At times legal divorce and/or physical separation can make room for more good and wonderful things, though it cannot eliminate brokenness.
All of this belongs to the complexities that I subsume under the rubric of “messiness.” Messiness does not entail a denial of good and wonderful things. It does entail a candid acknowledgment of brokenness. The “neatness” I object to in the likes of Zathura and Night at the Museum lies not in the embracing of good and wonderful things, but in the cheerful minimizing of brokenness.
I don’t know if that answers your question, but it’s what occurred to me in response to your question.
Well, let’s see… though you talk of good and wonderful things being “found” in broken families along with an acknowledgement of “brokenness”, that’s not quite an acknowledgement that good and wonderful things can also in fact be a consequence of broken families, is it? As such and unless an absence of denial about something is what constitutes “honest acknowledgement” about that thing, then what you’re calling “honest acknowledgment” of “messiness” and “brokenness” (that you’ve described as not entailing a denial of good and wonderful things found in [or emerging as a consequence of] broken families) would not quite be “honest acknowledgment about a particular sort of truth that many today would rather not face, namely, that in fact good and wonderful things (can and often do) consequently emerge from broken families,” would it?
I mean, even as God is the ultimate cause of good emerging from evil or from broken families or whatever, that does not preclude good and wonderful things being a consequence of broken families, in the sense of “consequence” meaning “an act or instance of following something as an effect, result, or outcome”. For example, imprisonment can be a consequence of crime even though the crime itself does not force the imprisonment but for the involvement of a police force and judicial system, and we can thus say “because you broke the law, you may be imprisoned as a consequence.” Likewise, good and wonderful things can be the consequence of broken families, because of God, and we can also say, “because the family was broken, good and wonderful things may emerge as a consequence.”
Of course, the language used might also be, “because you broke the law, you may ‘find’ yourself imprisoned,” and to the extent that such a “finding” honestly acknowledges that imprisonment is a consequence, then in that same sense the fact that “good and wonderful things can certainly be found in all families, broken as well as intact”, such would be an honest acknowledgment that good and wonderful things can be the consequence of broken families.
Sorry, T, my eyes are glazing over, and you know I likes me some convoluted sentences.
If you’re looking for explicit confirmation that bad things, including the breaking of families, can be the cause of good and beautiful things, well, of course. (I already said “At times legal divorce and/or physical separation can make room for more good and wonderful things, though it cannot eliminate brokenness”; that wasn’t explicit enough?)
Anything, however odious and harmful, can have good and beautiful consequences. A child of rape is no less good or beautiful for being the consequence of a heinous act.
The breaking of a family is always a bad thing. Like any other bad thing, it can have good consequences.
Was there something else you wanted?
The LORD is my shepherd; there is nothing I lack.
SDG: “Could be. I appreciate a particular sort of family film that honestly acknowledges the emotional consequences of broken families. The Spiderwick Chronicles and E.T. are also in this category for me.”
Thanks for your comment! I appreciate what you’re saying and yes, find it true that while the plot can get a lot of oomph from a “broken family” story line, it must also be honest enough to avoid the “sitcom” mentality of fixing everything by the last reel. It’s great when it works: we enjoyed “Spiderwick” both as books and the movie, and the older kids “got” the dad/monster reference.
On the other hand, it’s so refreshing and rare when a modern movie for kids doesn’t have a missing parent theme that we get a little excited when something like “The Incredibles” or even “Coraliine” comes along!
it’s interesting how polarizing this movie is, some people say WTWTA is the best movie of the year while others say it’s the worst; i tend to lean toward the latter opinion just because it didn’t really have a plot