Where the Wild Things Are

The visual, textual, and thematic elements of this movie blended seamlessly. Although the tomatometer seemed to see as the only flaw in this film its slower pace, I scoff at those who need to speed movies up to breakneck to enjoy them. The visual elements were almost universally breathtaking, as the camera alternated from Max's young perspective to long shots of atypically beautiful scenery.

If I saw an incongruous element, it was the voices of the monsters. I admire the voice acting, but I think a light filter to lower the tones might have helped the viewer take those first scenes more seriously, as the director obviously intended the film to be taken.

A recurring motif that I thoroughly appreciated was the caves. Each moment has Freudian echoes, although one later cave became something even better - a muppet trope.

The caves begin as Max builds his "igloo" (a snow cave, rather, but he can call it what he likes) to keep himself safe from snowball attacks. It has a serious "cool" factor, because he worked very hard at it all by himself. That fort fails quite seriously, and proves itself quite unsafe.

He builds a fort (tent) in his bedroom out of blankets to keep himself safe from lava, but that fails to attract his mother's attention, and so Max abandons it. An analyst might hypothesize a young boy trying to regress to a point of stronger connectivity between child and mother - the womb.

As Max meets the wild things, he helps destroy their houses (swallows-nest-shaped dwellings made of sticks), and so they sleep in a great pile of plush with Max cuddled in the warm, squishy center. He then begins a great project for a group fort (shaped quite unmistakably like a very pregnant womb), but finds that although he can share his safe place with his new monster friends, he is not safe from them inside it, and so he begins a smaller room just for himself, which angers Carol and precipitates the ending.

Several instances of tunneling also appear, although those are more obscure, from a Freudian perspective.

The Muppet trope, which almost made me giggle if it hadn't been so obviously symbolic, appeared when KW swallows Max to protect him from Carol when Carol has lost his temper.

Muppets are always swallowing each-other (or blowing each-other up), and the directors admit that they use this and other devices liberally to complete a sketch which seems endless (I always get a kick out of it).

Freud would disagree, but I find very little ostensibly symbolic or psychological in the Muppet versions. This movie presents an entirely different prospect, and a moment of psychological awakening for Max as he realizes that now he has found a place most like the womb, he almost suffocates and asks to be pulled out again by the mother-figure (KW). By achieving this revelation, he feels comfortable returning to his own home, a site of uncertainty and disillusionment. Max has learned to create his own safe place inside his own head; he can reconnect with his mother as a separate entity, rather than needing to be part of her again.

Where the Wild Things Are earned my admiration, and not just from the scenery and symbolism. The cast and crew created a smooth sail from reality and back again.