We Know "Where the Wild Things Are" Now

After what felt like a decade but was actually more like three years, it seems that we're finally going to be getting Spike Jonze's translation of the Maurice Sendak seminal children's book, "Where the Wild Things Are," and I could not be happier. (To be fair, it was known late last year that the film was slated for release in the fall of this one, but you can't blame me for not exactly investing in that pronouncement since the production has been embedded in secrecy and rumor for some time, and this conlusive release date is still a year later than was originally intended.) And to further tie down expectations of its release, Jonze and Co. have released a poster (below) sparse in its focal points but brimming with detail, and pithy in connoting the thematic and emotional range of the film. I think it's clever that the Wild Thing's face has been cut off: maintains mystery (and doesn't obligate the filmmakers to one appearance), but also helps to draw you to Max (Max Records) standing at his side, with the Wild Thing no doubt a transliteration of sorts of the boy's pre-adolescent mania. It also solidifies that practical effects, suits and puppetry will still be central to the visual aspects of the film, to assume a similar charm to that of Jim Henson's creations (but with an earthier, more adult flair).

(click to enlarge, via Slashfilm)

This is one such project that has kept my mouth watering, mind racing, ever since the concept of a marriage between Jonze and his knack for quirkiness and whimsy and Sendak's vividly, beautifully, earnest book about maturation, restraint and interpersonal responsibility slipped its way into my vision; and has topped two separate most anticipated lists of mine since production began. (I don't have those lists published online, but will now make it a feature in the future.)(I referenced this film in my last post as the project I'm most looking forward to that's penned by author Dave Eggers.) It's a match made in Heaven. Because although I adore "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," which was directed by Michel Gondry, I'm a sucker for Jonze's collaborations with Charlie Kaufman, partly because those scripts are just downright wondrous in their intricacies, but largely because of Jonze's magnificent way of constructing them. "Being John Malkovich" is a masterwork of absurd relationships and people, and as a meditation on being and consciousness, but is unforgettable in its sincerity, its conclusiveness about love as an end-all, be-all. And "Adaptation" is such a tender film with dozens of quotable lines that resonate largely because the humanity that Jonze is able to extract through some peculiar devices like pacing and scale are virtually unnoticeable at first, but indelible upon review.

It's like those experience you have as a child where someone has said something to you, or you have witnessed something that would otherwise be the minutiae of the day, but they become motifs in life, recurring with a little more depth and profundity each time. That's the beauty of childhood, and I hope Jonze has been able to instill that kind of approach in this film.

The trailer for the film will debut in front of "Monsters vs. Aliens" on March 27th.

Will you be going "Where the Wild Things Are?"


IMAGE from: Entertainment Weekly
SCOOPED first by: In Contention