Inside All of Us Is a Wild Thing

“Inside all of us is a Wild Thing.”

— Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are)

Where The Wild Things Are was at once everything and nothing that I expected. I expected it to be beautiful, and it was very beautiful. I expected it to be dark, and it was terribly dark. What I didn’t expect was how it would make me feel.

Sitting in that darkened theater, entranced like everyone else around me by the artistry and grotesque beauty of the film, I felt almost uncomfortable with the myriad of emotions it conjured up in me. Flashbacks to the most awkward moments of my preteen youth danced rapidly through my head and my chest. I distinctly remembered how it felt to be filled with many confusing emotions, all so near to the surface and warring constantly with one another to be on top. That period of time I usually treasure as footloose and fancy-free was very often fraught with unpredictable fear and paranoia, both valid and completely irrational – and I think we adults often forget that.

Even more striking was how time seemed to be in a different dimension then – each day an adventure, each hour a surprise. Sometimes an hour flew by so fast that dusk fell before you could prepare for it, catching you and your playmates altogether unawares. Suddenly it was time to go in and you weren’t ready for it, so a game of Flashlight Tag was hastily proposed. Or just as often, Time slowed to a creeping crawl. After cramming what felt like a month’s worth of fun and activity into just one hour, you felt changed somehow at the end of the day, barely recognizing your own face in the mirror. I remember I spent ridiculous amounts of time in front of the mirror as a child, reconciling what I saw with what I felt changing inside.

As I sat there, mesmerized by the depth of character found in those amazing puppets’ facial expressions, all those memories and more flickered in and out of my consciousness. The absolute, all-consuming fear of what may be hiding in the dark shadows under my bed came rushing back in a stomach tightening flood.  The euphoria of being found when I was lost and frightened, the confusion when presented with adults misbehaving, the desperation to be heard, to be noticed, to be loved…it all bubbled up to the surface of of my heart, reminding me that maybe those feelings had never strayed that far away after all. Reminding me that perhaps I’d just gotten better at ignoring it, or maybe just better at giving the unknown a name and a face, compartmentalizing everything in an effort to better make sense of the world around me.

I teared up at odd, unexpected moments in this world of the Wild Things where there is no clear bad guy or good guy, in this childhood version of the psyche where the battle for good and evil plays out in the jungle of your overwhelming heart and mind. As it is in real life, the life of the Wild Things is bittersweet, usually more bitter than sweet because they have the annoying tendency to eat their kings and they have no mommies. Carol, the impulsive, raging, angry, friendliest monster, was the easiest to relate to. No one plays the wronged, temper-tantrum-thrower like James Gandolfini. Something about Gandolfini’s voice and way makes even Tony Soprano, the murdering mob boss, lovable.  Carol moved me to tears, especially when he felt compelled to show Max the wooden city he’d built. It was a vision of what Carol wanted life to be, his paradise where everyone lives together happily in one house, they have fun all the time and sleep together every night in one giant pile.

Carol: It’s going to be a place where only the things you want to happen, would happen.
Max: We could totally build a place like that!

Without changing a single important piece of the story, director Spike Jonze and writer Dave Eggers, managed to subtly address the most common pain children experience today, the pain of divorce. We all forget, due to the frequency of it’s occurrence,  how terrible a toll divorce takes on the innocent victims, the children. Wild Things doesn’t let you forget. Especially the most important question children have, “Do you still love me just as much?”

For those of us adults still possessed of an active imagination and jealously harboring the bits of the child still left inside, Where The Wild Things Are is a strange, dark and yet beautiful journey into all of our not-to-distant pasts. And for those of you shaking your heads, muttering about your extended age and life experience,  don’t forget that the world is ancient and we are each nothing more than seconds on it’s considerable time line. Let the wild rumpus start!