Jesse A. Schroeder

Tweet
Last weekend I saw "Where the Wilds Things Are" (finally). This weekend, I read "The Catcher in the Rye." Both works of fiction have been met with mixed reviews for a variety of reasons. Some people thought WTWTA was not "true to the book" and took too many liberties. CINR has been banned from high schools because of excessive profanity and sexuality. Yet both are also beloved works of art, embraced and adored by many.

I wasn't sure how to react after seeing WTWTA - it's a very different type of movie. Visually, it is engaging, fun and brilliant. The "wild things" are captivating and I found myself continually studying them, hoping for a better camera shot or longer scene. But the plot and dialogue of the movie left something to be desired - at first take anyway. The flow is very up and down. One minute all the characters are happy, and snuggling in a big friendly sleep pile. Then one gets angry and begins destroying things. Then Max suggests they have a dirt clod fight, and all is well again. Until someone gets hit in the head and it "really hurts." Up and down. Good and bad. No genuine resolve in the end; Max just decides its time to leave, and then he runs home and eats soup with his mother. The end.

Discussing the movie with a friend, she suggested that the various "wild things" were aspects of Max's psyche, various elements of his mind and personality, representing different feelings or roles that he would play in real life. There is the angry, agressive Carol; the affirming Douglas; the always mumbling but no one listens to (I can't even remember it's name). The wild things are wild like Max's real life is wild. The escape to the place "where the wild things are" is really a brief look into Max's own head, which is really where all of these creatures live anyway - in Max's imagination.

Thinking about the movie from this angle, I was no longer disappointed in the lack of a typical Hollywood plot arc. Instead, I embraced the moments in the movie that felt very true to what I remember my childhood being like: playing the game where the carpet is lava and you can't step on it; chasing the dog around the house; building snow forts; completely random and hilarious comments ("That was my favorite arm!") But WTWTA is more than and accurate depiction of what childhood imaginations and games are like; it shows what all of life is really like.

"The Catcher in the Rye" really grabbed my attention in the author's ability to brutally expose Holden Caufield's attitude toward the entire expanse of society - from the tiniest detail (piano bar performers) to fundamental structures of American life (the education system; dating and family life). At first, Caufield is just funny in his caustic remarks about anything and everything. At times, his actions appear almost as random as Max's "wild things," and they are amusing as a result. When the character makes no recognizable change, but rather continues to follow his own cynical demise, he becomes and antihero. But it doesn't take long before the honest reader can read themselves into the character of Caufield. He says out loud what we all think about the people we see on the street. He wanders the streets aimlessly, holds the phone without dialing a number for twenty minutes, doesn't recognize his own depression until its too late - just like we all have.

To me, both CINTR and WTWTA are powerful, artistic, fictional representations that are very true to life. Often we like to watch movies and read books that result in neat packages and clean stories with well-defined plots and predictable dialogue. But life as fiction as presented by these two works is predictably random. Up and down. Up and down. Cynical and depressing. But somehow in the end it resonates in a severe way because it is true to the human condition. Neither work leaves the viewer/reader totally stranded and hopeless. Both find some sense of pragmatic salvation in the arms of family - a mother or a sister. Both remind us that no matter how crazy things feel, life goes on, and there really is no escape, as much as we want it.

WTWTA, originally a story book for kids, as a movie is an enigmatic mirror of the wildness of everyday life - the kind of life that for a few days Holden Caufield drunkenly walks through - a few days that accurately represent the internal struggle the human race has experienced for the ages.