Ok.
So it is not advisable to go see Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are alone. Or maybe you should go alone - just don’t go on a busy night and then have no option but to sit between 2 couples, among a sea of other couples, with no kleenex and nowhere to rest your elbows.
Suffice it to say, things got….weird.
For the record I don’t consider myself much of a crier, with one exception I have never felt comfortable showing emotions in front of others and find it very, very difficult to find the tears when appropriate. But that doesn’t mean I’m not a baby, I am in fact a huge baby- just one with deep seeded feelings of shame and adversity towards showing weakness (see: feelings) to others. Fucked up, right? That said, I cried basically the entire way through Where the Wild Things Are, and after it was over I went to the bathroom and cried some more. I mean definitely not my finest moment, but color me fucking affected- it takes A LOT (see: puppet tears) for me to lose my shit like this. It was just so- beautiful, and quiet, and moving, and I don’t know. It isn’t even much of a story; Where the Wild Things Are is a moving portrait of a child’s loneliness and the darkness that can surround a family; done with the perfect amount of humor and silence. While the book itself is a mere 48 pages (and indeed this movie is done with great respect to Maurice Sendak’s classic) that tells the story of a small boy learning to control his anger, the feature is stretched into a full hour and 41 minute journey following a small boy while he learns to control his reality and the hard truths that come with it. Where the Wild Things Are is packed with human emotion, but without the drama of adult perspective it is subtle and much more poignant. With its sparse dialogue, lush landscapes, and wonderful camera movement every piece of this movie felt perfect, and not only does it abandon the real world it penetrates it - showing Max as he learns that you can never truly leave behind the loneliness and solitude that encapsulate sadness, or the wild things that live there.
A+
