Where The Wild Things Are… Apparently Back In That Guillermo Del Toro Movie, You Know, The One That Should Have Won An Oscar

As I approached to face down my once-low, now verging-on-hopeful expectations, going to see Where the Wild Things Are with fellow film-buff Chadd Harbold, I was still secretly hoping it would be terrible, or that at least the dialogue would be or something, so that I could in some way blame Dave Eggers.

Unfortunately, I was denied my Eggers hate-fest as the movie turned out to be not only gentle and sensitive in its adaptation of the book, but supremely well structured in its narrative.

For those of you wondering, yes, there was a narrative.

Fast-forward to exiting the movie, walking with Chadd out on to the sidewalk as we began to process our opinions.

I can’t remember which one of us started with the ceremonial “Well…” that would indicate the beginning of the discussion of the movie.

But I remember the first thing out of my mouth, the same thing I had been thinking since the plot of the movie became apparent:

“Like a less literal Pan’s Labyrinth.“

***

The theater where we saw Where The Wild Things Are was Chadd’s favorite, an out-of-the-way out-post all-the-way east in the middle-upper housing development, Kips Bay.

I had noted the Loews Kips Bay before for having one of the most ingenious ideas of a movie theater I had ever seen: incorporating a Nathan’s into its concession stand.

Nathan’s famous french fries have all the delicious salty- and oily-ness of popcorn (and some of the crunch too) without all the pesky kernels that stick in your teeth.

But Chadd loved the Loews Kips Bay because it was largely abandoned; it was an over-large facility with huge screens and theaters that were never full.

Case and point was the 3:50 screening of Wild Things that we saw, which should have been over-run with tater-tots clinging to their moms, who were finally happy that they could show their kids something that might make them smarter without making them think that there were any magicians down in Greenwich Village or anywhere else.

“That’s Demi Lovato.” I commented to Chadd in the pre-screening enter-mercials that preceed the previews, citing the young woman singing with Disney characters.

“I think that’s pretty frightening that you know that.” Chadd told me and whatever I responded wasn’t a good enough answer to the allegation.

Anyway, the theater was more than half-empty and the tater-tots could be avoided with strategic placement and little effort at all.

After some all-animated previews (excluding a dreadful white-liberal-helps-black-child Sandra Bullock vehicle), the film began.

***

Where The Wild Things Are met my expectations in at least one significant way: It reminded me how much I like Spike Jonze.

Here Jonze, with his able cameraman Lance Acord, darts around with a rough-and-tumble energy to match the fierce movement and swinging moods of his 9 year-old protagonist Max. This same feeling is present whether Max is in reality or the more figurative Island of the Wild Things, since physical play is such a vital dynamic of the 9 year-old experience.

Not only does Jonze do an amazing job directing his young actor, Max Records (anyone who wants some insight into how he accomplishes should watch the truly genius featurette about the film here), he also maintains a child-like sense of wonder in the way he phrases the film, the look of the characters, the understanding of the world.

As Max escapes wearing the guise of a “wild” boy (a white-wolf costume), he is running Peter Pan-like from the realities of the world, from growing up, from realizing that he will not always have his mother’s attention, that he will not lways be a “king” in his own house. So he goes to a place where he is king, a place that is feral, like the imagination of a 9 year-old, a place that both grants the wish-fulfillment inherent in cinema and plays out like a dream, with the truth-telling of the unconscious manifesting over-and-over in the situations Max faces on the Island of the Wild Things. These Wild Things are in love, they are fighting, they are capable of laziness, insecurity, great power and great destruction. In a word, they are human, though they’re not, they’re wild. They’re Max’s conception of the adult world, of the forces in his life he must come to understand. Chief among these forces are the wild things Carol and K.W., who stand in for the parts of Max’s consciousness that are most at play and thus have the most integral role.

What transpires on that island is Shakespearean, it’s allegorical, it’s a play within a play, that denotes the tensions and realities of Max’s life without ever feeding us back-story like we were stupid. Instead, it achieves a Pixar-level of multiple layers, enjoyable and interesting in the movements and colors of its characters, but with a darker and more complicated message for those who dare seek it. In this way, it is a movie I show great respect for, because just like the book it was spawned from, Where The Wild Things Are as a film, allows a young, unsophisticated watcher the opportunity to begin to think about that realm, about their own wild place. It’s the sort of film, as the book was, that allows child to enter deeper into themselves and their conception of the world and for that it should be congratulated.

***

But of course, here’s the rub, going back to the quote I said coming out of the movie: Where the Wild Things Are IS a movie that bears a lot in common with Pan’s Labyrinth.

Both have precocious, young protagonists that show bravery in the face of difficult situations and seek refuge through fantasy.

Similarly, both allow multiple layers of entry through allegory and metaphor, through the art of fantastic visual storytelling.

The differences are marked clearly: Pan’s Labyrinth is an historical drama, as well as a coming-of-age film (what Wild Things arguably is). While Max’s view of the world is fairly in line with ours, his perspective only slightly stylized, Ofelia’s view of the world is constantly shaded through the prism of her storybook understanding: with characters of pure good and pure evil, monsters and heroes. I’ve heard this element of Pan’s Labyrinth as sometimes, forgive me, panned for its heavy-handedness. The detractors might say that the one-dimensionality of the characters in that film undermine its message or that Ofelia’s metaphoric challenges either don’t make sense for her emotional situation or else are boring. I find that as a reader of fantasy as a child, the idea of imagining reality in the terms of fantasy is intoxicating when the situations around you seem immutable and grim,

However, those who didn’t like those elements of Pan’s Labyrinth, would not have much to complain about in Where The Wild Things Are. There’s the same dichotomy of the real and imagined worlds, stand-ins and metaphors. But it’s all less literal, not only in the amount of Max’s world that we are not shown and instead left to imagine, but that unlike Pan’s Labyrinth, there is no inter-cut here between the “real” and “imagined” worlds. Whereas Guillermo Del Toro (director of Labyrinth) is a crafter of a distinct aesthetic like Terry Gilliam or Tim Burton, Jonze is someone who prefers a more shaggy-dog inter-mixing of the real and the fantastic. In both Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, the grittiness of personal issues becomes disturbed and interrupted by bouts with the unreal, after which supposedly “real” situations only may or may not return. If Del Toro is more story-book, Jonze is more Kerouac, more stream-of-consciousness.

When I decided to write this post, on a whim, I had seen someone compare to the two films on Facebook stating that “the wild rumpus was mostly hot air if you’ve seen Pan’s Labyrinth”. I wrote this post because while I agree with the comparison, I don’t agree with the evaluation.

I remember my father once telling me a story when we went wine-shopping together. Like I played Magic cards or later video games, my dad liked to shop for wine and when I was younger it was interesting for me to accompany him, if not the least, to see him in his element, engrossed in something like I was involved in my own nerd-tastic endeavors. When he was looking at a shelf of wine, I asked him how he knew which ones were better, if he followed ratings, or had some sort of cost/taste ratio.

“You know,” He told me. “I remember asking the same question to a wine owner, a french guy, many years ago. He looked at me with some digust and he said, ‘Why does everything with you Americans have to be a baseball game with someone winning and some losing? Why can’t things just be what they are.’”

Pan’s Labyrinth and Where The Wild Things Are are both good films in their own right and I appreciated both of them. While I feel Jonze (or Eggers) might owe some debt to Del Toro for the structure of the storytelling (and that Del Toro should be commended for an original script), they’re different films, with their own strengths and weaknesses and I was happy to see both of them.

And later on in the evening, Chadd and I got real drunk and went to Rubulad, anyway.

J-Sam was there and he ended up leaving his shirt there, on accident.

A good night and day, indeed.

***

NATHAN’S AT LOEWS KIPS BAY THEATER

French Fries- Approx $5.00

2nd Ave bet. 31st and 32nd Sts

6 to 33rd St

The Feeling of Deep Depression Accompanying The Realization That One Hasn’t Seen Enough Movies at The New York Film Festival And That It Is Now Over

“Nicholas Feitel has been a writer, an actor and a college student for some time now.”

“As a writer, his work has appeared in New York City in print and on the web.”

“As an actor, he has appeared in theater Off-Broadway, in commercials and on The Tonight Show With David Letterman.”

“As a college student, well, he’s almost graduated from NYU Film School.”

“Currently, he splits his time between writing as a Contributing Editor for the Film Society of Lincoln Center and his beautiful girlfriend, Eva.”

***

This was what I came up with, more or less, at the prompting of a field titled “Director’s Bio” on the website for the South by Southwest Film Festival.

Actually, it’s what I came up with about the fourth-or-fifth time after my work was erased, abandoned, rethought or, in one particularly savage case, X-ed out by some unsuspecting or malicious malefactor at my work.

“Drat.” I cursed mentally, secretly glad on some level that the situation had given me permission to use the word “drat”.

In fact, it was my work that had persuaded me to submit my thesis, LOSER to that particular festival, since I had met a young lady I knew from high school who happened to work for Jim Jarmusch’s production company, and as we took the awkward “I haven’t seen you in 4 years and wasn’t even sure if you were really cool then” walk, she mentioned that SXSW was good for “first-timers” as I indicated that in fact the arriving “E” was my train.

I had gotten done with 13 or so other applications, met with various degrees of ease through the past couple months and culminating in a recent bout of hysteria over the incompetence of the United States Postal Service.

Namely, I had shipped something Priority Mail, only to see it delivered 7 days later (as opposed to the “2-3″ advertised) on a Saturday morning when, of course, the festival offices were closed.

When I used the tracking service I had paid so much more for, as an additional option on the automated machine, to figure this out, I found out I could not schedule a “redelivery” as advertised by the website. Instead in was in the festival’s hands to decide whether to send someone to go pick up the film from the one numb-nuts stupid enough to ship via U.S. Mail.

“It’s more expensive, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t get there.” I announced unceremoniously, headphones-in-ears at the late-night-services of a FedEx facility.

And I walked out proudly.

Only to discover that the receipt containing the tracking number that would give me so much joy in the minutiae of where my package was, had blown away down Hudson St, down the shutter-closed driveways of nearby UPS and down toward Tribeca.

“Shit.” I said to the wind, disappointed that it wasn’t “drat”.

***

One would think with all the pomp and circumstance of my self-appointed/created “Director’s Bio” that I might actually have it in me to see the films put on by the company for which I was supposedly a “Contributing Editor”, capital C, capital E.

But of course, I didn’t.

Or I mean, really I did.

I saw Kanikosen and Ghost Town for the actual job at Film Society, which I reviewed here and here, respectively. I saw Trash Humpers, the new Harmony Korine film for fun, which had a cool, if sophomoric effect when the filmmaker recognized me. I saw Hadewijch and Everyone Else in a case of Harbold-ian misunderstanding, wherein my friend Chadd blearily misinterpreted a mid-morning “what’s up” as a “Hey, will you buy me tickets for that Bruno Dumont film that you are seeing later this evening?”, which ended up well (even though the Dumont film was French-weirdocratic stuff) since Everyone Else was an ok “Germ-blecore” time (Trademark Pending) and we got to go out with Whit Stilman, by luck, after the film, who was nice enough to buy Chadd and I our drinks and discuss the modern cinema with us, even though we collectively bit our tongues when he dissed Johnny Guitar as “definitely a bad movie”.

I even got to see one of my favorite films of the year from perhaps the filmmaker I most aspire to, Todd Solondz, which I did write about for Film Society, though I’d have seen it for fun too.

But still, the feeling set in on me, on a Saturday morning, when I headed uptown perhaps ambivalently and missed my comped screening of Bong Joon-ho’s Mother, only to find out that there were no more screenings left of the film.

When I think of the New York Film Festival, I think not only of the movies I see there, but the experience as a whole and the past I’ve had there. I remember contentious or ludicrous Q+As, last minute viewings of 3-hours-films, the satisfaction of getting in to sold-out screenings for just 10 bucks waiting in what felt like the winner’s line outside the theater, or just the high caused by too-many free-espressos from the “gratis” Illy guys who seemed to serve you endlessly like bartenders who just don’t know when to stop.

It’s an experience each year, one best served with a liberal helping of filmie-type friends, with whom you can share conspiratorially, the nerdy glee of knowing that you’ve seen the new (insert douchebag-y filmmaker here) movie 2.5 weeks before the rest of art-house crowd of New York City will see it, that is, provided that most of the art-house crowd didn’t just attend that very same screening you just did and realizing that yes, they probably did.

So I mourn even though I’ve seen more movies than most at the festival, the lost opportunity in not seeing more.

And, simultaneously, I feel happy that I even feel sad about it.

If that makes any sense.

***

Finally, a word on something.

I have been much maligned (in my eyes of course) for my lack of anticipation for Where The Wild Things Are, mostly stemming from my (mostly one-sided) feud with superhero enthusiast and professional douchebag Dave Eggers.

However, at MoMA on Sunday, I had the opportunity, extremely begrudgingly, to see what was billed as a “making-of” documentary, but what turned out to be a portrait of Maurice Sendak, author of the book of Where The Wild Things Are, called Tell Them Anything You Want.

The movie was lovely, the best sort of short documentary, the one that attempts not to know it’s subject, but to understand him on his level, for a moment.

Sendak is a unique talent and Where The Wild Things Are is only one of his magical books that I was lucky enough to enjoy as a youngster and which have changed the lives of many a youngster before they did me.

He’s also a daringly funny person, extremely morbid, constantly discussing his own death. He’s filled with a uniquely Jewish blend of the ability to put himself down while simultaneously pointing out how great he is.

In the documentary, he discusses in the same breath, his loving relationship with his caretaker and his mother’s failed attempt to abort him. When the interviewer gawks, he shows incredulousness.

“What?” He asks, with his old crotchety Jew-tude. “It’s the truth. They told me flat out: We couldn’t afford you.”

Sendak is too great a character to describe in a blog post, but one thing the movie (which was recently itself shortlisted for this year’s Oscars) reminded me of is how much I like Spike Jonze.

Jonze, another Jewish kid, was sorely missed in such films as Synecdoche, New York and The Science of Sleep, that he could have tamed with his unique-but-limited sensibility as a director.

Being John Malkovich and Adaptation are both brilliant films and owe much to him, though they also are considered “Charlie Kaufman” movies.

What’s clear from Tell Them Anything You Want though, is that Jonze understands Sendak. He knows his story, his emotions and the feelings behind the book.

As such, with much humbling-and-bumbling, I recant some of my pessimism towards Where The Wild Things Are.

I like Jonze. I admire him.

And I feel like anyone who can make such a loving-compelling-understanding documentary about Maurice Sendak and his work, can bring an understanding to a film adaptation of his book.

Reviews have already come out for the film, ranging from Ed Gonzalez’s mostly positive Slant review to David Denby of the New Yorker’s review which is significantly more mixed.

As I said, nowadays, I hold out hope for the movie that it might be good or at least well-meaning.

But for now, at least, I can rest assured that if it’s bad, I’ll have a name to blame that’s not Jonze:

That *motherfucking* Dave Eggers.

What a douche.