I don’t remember the book Where The Wild Things Are from my childhood, but I worked for 11 years as a nanny and came to know it quite well. At first, it made no sense to me. I would read it aloud to children but wouldn’t get any meaning from it. Then I heard a line of the book spoken by Leo Starwind in the middle of a song of his. Starwind spoke the line in a very particular, distinct, dramatic voice. I went home and read the story aloud in this voice, and instantly my love, understanding, and connection to the tale clicked into place.
That may be a strange story of coming to love a children’s book, but it is a strange book indeed, and the movie blows it up into the reality-sized strangeness of the emotional landscape that is real life. The movie Where The Wild Things Are takes the barest hints into the mind of Max offered up in the book and fiercely and fearlessly expands on those clues into a dark and dirty, uncomfortably formidable movie.