‘Wild’ offers hip take on classic tale

Childhood: it’s that mythical time when all actions don’t have repercussions, when it’s okay to make mistakes and not worry about their consequences.

That might be what some people think, and perhaps it was true for them, but don’t go into Spike Jonze’s amazingly hip adaptation of “Where the Wild Things Are” with that mindset. Where Maurice Sendak’s 1963 book may have supported the theory, Jonze delves deeper into what it means for a wild little boy to rule over a group of maudlin Wild Things.

The action of the film follows the book in most respects but also takes wide liberties. The opening scene, wherein Max the Wolf-Boy builds an igloo on his suburban sidewalk only to be thwarted by his older sister’s friends, gives the viewer not only fierce sympathy for the boy, but also a vision of his wonderful imagination.

Though the book ends with Max’s melancholy and homesickness leading him home, the movie veers more into the neuroses of the Wild Things. Though never named in the books, they all have personalities as fantastically unruly as their appearances. Carol (James Gandolfini) is perhaps the most recognizable, as the live-action representation of the Wild Thing on the book’s original cover. He is the dreamer of the bunch, but he is often held back by low self-esteem, as are the rest of the Wild Thing “family.”

One of the film’s greatest strengths is the almost unilateral character development and depth. Where the personalities of the beautiful beasts weren’t given much time in the original story, Jonze and co-writer Dave Eggers (“Away We Go,” “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”) give relatable, if archetypal, minds and thoughts to the group of Wild Things. They are obvious metaphors for Max’s own conflicts and those of his family. Carol is Max’s closest friend because he is Max’s closest analog, while Carol’s love KW is much the counterpart of Max’s mother, drifting away to new friends while Carol can’t figure out why.

The “hip” aspect of the film has been played up, and though it is true that Jonze is acclaimed for mind-bending indie rock music videos (Pavement’s “Shady Lane” being a great example), he is also an indubitably tasteful puppeteer.

From the title screen’s hand-scrawled typography to the consistently beautiful shots and aforementioned character development, Jonze creates an adult-friendly version of Sendak’s classic tale. His reinterpretation of the Wild Things as the stuff of a golden Woody Allen film is nothing short of spectacular to watch, though not always inviting for younger viewers who have no understanding of relationship dynamics and the sometimes hopeless pursuit of love.

Cinematographer Lance Acord cannot be applauded enough, displaying the disparate climates of the Wild Things’ island, from desert to dense temperate forests to the Fort (see it for yourself). The shots as Max and his giant friends run through the jungle defy tracked Steadicam in favor of indie cinema’s best friend, the Handicam. It’s wildly reminiscent of Truffaut’s 1959 classic on misspent youth, “The 400 Blows,” whose dramatic long running take ending undoubtedly influenced the film’s movement. Often, shots rotate to catch radical movement, bending the viewer’s perception and reminding them that once upon a time, they saw the world this way, too.

4 out of 5 stars.