Wild Things Need A Mother, Not A King

Kirsten Beachy

When Max parts from Carol, the dearest of his monstrous friends on the island of the Wild Things, he’s stumped for words. They’ve let each other down but love each other deeply. As the wind pushes Max’s boat further from shore, the two stare at each other helplessly. On actor Max Records’ face, each emotion is new and genuine, not easily named, but we can see he’s too overcome to speak. 

Carol the monster’s dirty CGI (computer-generated image) face trembles at the edge of tears. He wades into the sea after Max, his dread-locked legs disappearing underwater, the waves lapping his striped belly. 

Finally the spirit intercedes with groans too deep for words. Two-horned Carol sighs, aroooo, and Max in his bedraggled wolf suit howls back. Soon the cliffs of the wild island are echoing with their howls of love, loss, and marrow-deep kinship.

“Where the Wild Things Are” is no common children’s movie. Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic doesn’t rely on gags; it seeks no perfect resolution. The plot isn’t based on a quest or crime that serves as a skeleton for a string of awesome action sequences and one-liners. Scenes of wild destruction and celebration alternate with quiet moments—watching, waiting, going for walks.

The dramatic tension of the film lies in interpersonal bonds that grow, tighten, stretch, snap, and are retied imperfectly. For example, (spoiler alert!) before all the wild rumpusing is over, someone will lose an arm and the replacement limb will be laughably inadequate.
Not everyone sees Jonze’s approach as an improvement on the story. My cousin, something of a wild thing himself at Max’s age, warned his Facebook friends to skip the movie: “The wild things are just hairy emo kids.” 

Yes, perhaps. But these hairy emo kids have much to remind us about the realities of childhood. Jonze’s beasts are beautifully rendered through a process that seamlessly layers costumed actors with puppetry with CGI to create breathing, recognizable versions of Sendak’s monster drawings. Max’s imaginary world is uncannily human.

In the real world, Max contends with an absent father, a sister maturing beyond his reach, and a mother (Catherine Keener) stretched thin with work and worry. He worries that the sun will one day die. 

Jonze gives Max problems beyond the scope of his powers. They can’t be made right. The best he can do is entertain his mother with vampire stories as a brief respite from her tense work situation. But he adds to her stress, too, trashing his sister’s room, climbing on the counters, rampaging down the hall. “Max, you’re out of control!” his mother screams, as he flees from the house and away to the sea, where he’ll find a boat that takes him to the wild island.

The wild things long for a king to make things right, but they have a habit of devouring their monarchs. They lift the royal crown and scepter from a pile of charred bones. Max bluffs his way into kingship: “I have powers from other lands, from ancient times. Don’t make me show you!” He unwittingly signs up for a savior role. “Will you keep out all the sadness?” Carol asks. Max assures them that he has a sadness shield, “big enough for all of us.”

At first things go well for King Max (“Fresh king!” Judith warbles, as the fun begins): He starts a wild rumpus, brings back K. W. a beast who’s been drifting away from the group, and the monsters all sleep in a happy pile. He rallies the creature to construct a massive fort and makes big plans: “We’ll have an ice cream parlor . . . a detective agency . . . our own language!”

But saving the wild things proves to be a difficult task. Like Christ’s disciples, the creatures jostle for their leader’s favor. Judith asks Max, “How does it work around here? Are we the same, or are some of us better?” But Max doesn’t have a good answer. He wants to keep everyone happy, but he can’t deliver the peaceable kingdom he promised.

After conflict and sorrow return to the wild island, Carol challenges him to make things right: “He has powers. He told us. Right Max? Show us.” But Max’s anticlimactic gestures—a little boy playing at sorcery—disappoint. “That’s what we waited for?” ask the monsters. “There’s no such thing as a king,” the bird-monster Douglas concludes. “He’s just a boy pretending to be a wolf, pretending to be a king.” 

As the action spirals out of control, Max flees from an angry beast. His hiding place is a sort of death, his removal from it a resurrection. But he doesn’t return to the wild things transfigured. Instead, he’s humbled, ready to set aside all claims to transcendent power.
The best thing Max leaves for the wild things is not the fort built by monster strength and the powers of Max’s imagination. It’s a crudely constructed heart, a message of love built of broken sticks. The wild things don’t need a ruler; they need unconditional love. Before he leaves, Max says, “I wish you guys had a mom.”

Imagine, for a moment, Christ of the Wild Things, or better, a Madonna of the Wild Things, a great loving beast who cradles you in her hairy paws, one who accepts that “it’s hard to be a family,” who loves the whole disorderly pile, who clutches you to her massive, matted breast, even as you rant, or cry. Even when you bite.

Because “Where the Wild Things Are” is no common kid’s movie, it doesn’t end with an easy “I love you, Mom. I’m sorry.” Max’s homecoming takes place without conversation, but his dinner is waiting on the table. Behind the final, speaking look he shares with his mother, I imagine the howls of the beasts again, expressing emotions too deep for words.
—Kirsten Beachy, Harrisonburg, Virginia, teaches writing at
Eastern Mennonite University, communes with ducks and honeybees, and works on several books-in-progress. Her most recent works of fiction and nonfiction appear in Shenandoah, Rhubarb, and the forthcoming Norton Anthology of Hint Fiction. She is accepting submissions for a collection of creative writing inspired by The Martyrs Mirror, see ad back pages of this DreamSeeker Magazine issue.