Precious. Intimate. Immediate. Privileged. These are the ways we can describe the various moments that occur in Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. These terms, which any frosh film student should recognize, are generally associated with documentary cinema. They have become applicable here, however, because Mr. Jonze rightly decided to let the pomp and circumstance that comes with any major studio children’s film fall away, focusing this film on the rambunctious perspective of a child in flux.

Hyperactive and creative Max is a boy with seemingly no friends but his mother. Always looking for an adventure to go on, he is stuck in a life of suburban boredom and Oedipal rage (aren’t we all?). There are a bevy of Freudian signifiers which lead to Max’s escape from his home on a journey to the ends of the earth. There he meets the folks we lovingly call “the wild things” (Buber, anyone?) who take him in as their king. At home with the beasts, our young ruffian slowly finds that even life in his own private utopia can get complicated. Read on…