Where the Wild Things are

At some point when I was young,a cousin gave me two hardcovers for my birthday-the first a story about worms accompanied with bright,amazing graphics and the second,Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.The latter was a memorable read-I remember being deeply fascinated,excited and scared all at once-there was something in the way it was drawn that drew out an interesting,complicated response.

The screen adaptation,is visually ungiving.The setting is almost entirely devoid of life or colour.Forests made of thin trees and twigs and tall piles of dead leaves,next to a smooth,empty desert-the entire film is muted in a pale,dark palette and coupled with the inherent gloominess of the characters and their dialogue-the end result is joyless and pessimistic.

The big issue was how disconnected it was.This alternate world inhabited by the Wild Things,instead of opening up to Max in his bedroom (as it does in the book),is found after Max runs out of home and sails his way across an imagined ocean.I felt that the story was leading to nowhere the whole time,with no link between fantasy and reality-at the end everything that happens on the island,and just the entire film-feels completely insubstantial to me.

...