Where the bi-polar things are

Recently I watched the film of Where the Wild Things Are.  Whilst I don't remember this myself as a young child, I do remember it being one of my little brother's favourite kids' books.  It was a nicely-drawn book of a little boy who gets sent to bed early without supper for being "wild", then travels to an island where he gets to be king of the wild things and gets rid of all his energy and anger.  Then, he wakes up, in his bed, and his supper is in his room waiting for him.  No massive metaphors from recollection, other than when you're a kid, everything seems so dramatic, but generally, your parents still love you and will make you dinner.  Job done.  Happy ending.

But the film, oh the film.  After a promising start with little Max getting angry at his sister, and an absent (or deceased) father and a mother who's having trouble at work, but who seems to be larging it on the dating scene, Max's story then takes a very troubling turn.

Christ on a unicycle, this film was like Pinter for children.  Despite some lovely visuals, straight from the book's illustrations, when Max arrives at the island of wild things, the wild things (monsters) were all chronically depressed.  The main male monster was called Carol (bad enough he gets a girl's name, and goes part-way to explain his inherent anger problems) but then appeared to have a really weird relationship with a monster character called KW, who might have been his mother, his sister or his girlfriend.  Whatever their relationship, it made me feel dirty.

(As an aside, KW has two new friends, who are two owls which she holds in each hand.  Obviously.  She gets their attention by throwing rocks at them to knock them out of the sky.  Which is a great thing to teach children about how to look after birds.)

The film was filled with lines like, "You know the sun is going to die", "everything turns to dust", "families are hard".  They then build a fort together (though there don't appear to be any enemies), and angry male Carol decides he's going to smash it up.

Max then leaves the island having improved it not at all, and if anything, has made things rather worse.

He runs back into his house, clearly some hours later, but his mother (now sans boyfriend), doesn't even appear to have called the police.  Though she does give him dinner.

The whole thing was disturbing.  If it can hold your child's attention through the meaningful pauses and the existential crises, you have a very special child.  Enrol it on a philosophy course immediately.  See if it can sit through all of Beckett's Endgame.  I couldn't.