Reflecting on Things That Are Wild, a Month Later (from update 534)

There is this story in the bible about a boy who thinks he is a man, so he takes all of the money that his dad was saving up for him to receive on the day that he died and thus ran to a far off location, someplace like Atlantic City or Los Vegas or Gatlinburg, TN.

Out here, "Nobody knows me at all", he said to himself. And so he went about being the master of his own world. It was not for long that he realized that he was not the king of his own life, and with his control he had made a huge mess of things.

In his lowest moment, he realized that he was meant to be at home, imperfect though it may have been. The boy works up the courage to make the trek home and upon arrival, expecting his father to turn him away, he finds that his dad had been waiting anxiously for him since the day he set his sails and headed out to the great unknown. Even then, at the resolution of the story, the brother is upset that he has returned home to such open arms. In other words, life went on at home, that even in the resolution, there was still heartache and tough things to deal with. They were there, together, but it was still just as hard as life usually tends to be.

It was at least a month ago that I saw, "Where The Wild Things Are." I was not one of those kids who grew up with the 1960's, 10 line story that dominated so many child's thoughts as their sleepy eyes fell down to rest at night. I am pretty sure that I had read it in my childhood, though, because when I thought of the story it seemed familiar to me in a way that I can't quite solidify. I don't have the memory of reading it, I have something more vague. It is kind of like looking at a picture of a memory, instead of having the actual memory itself.

The film itself fleshes out a simple story in a staggering and moving way. I was saying recently how I really appreciate films that feel real. I love it when I can watch characters interact on a screen and believe that those exchanges could be felt in the real and wide open life. The boy's childhood was so accurate. Max's heart breaks the way a child's heart would break. He loses his sense of reason when he reacts to the wrongs that he feels inflicted, but when you see it, you know that lack of reason. You know what he is feeling.

Max throws a fit and runs off to the far country. He sets sail for an island inhabited by monsters. It was amazing to watch as Max sees the way they interact, and it was incredible to find yourself resonating with large, muppet-esque creatures hiking around an island, laughing with each other, loving each other, biting at one another not with their teeth but with their words. Hurting and leaving one another and returning and leaving again. Maybe because they are monsters and not real people, I was able to focus on their interactions better and not get lost in how they look or what their status was in the real world. Because they weren't doctors or lawyers or business executives, because they didn't live in the suburbs or work in non-profit or wear American Eagle or Ed Hardy or Brooks Brothers, I wasn't distracted. I wasn't distracted by how beautiful the monsters were on the outside. All of that was a non-issue. All I had was their interactions, their relationships, and because of this, these monsters made for one of the most human movies that I have ever seen.

Max was made their king and they expected him to make everything better between them. He was supposed to use some kind of magic to solve their very real problems. It doesn't take long for Max to realize that he doesn't have the ability to make everything better for them, and this is illustrated perfectly when his one question to the pair of old, wise owls was "How do I make everyone okay?" But he can't understand their response, even though it seems that everyone else can. Don't you wish you knew how to make everyone okay?

Isn't it amazing that even in Max's greatest fantasy come to life, he still lacks the power to restore people's lost hearts? That's so hard. And so are the relationships of the monsters that carry on when he is gone. He changed their lives, no doubt, but he had to go home. The love that they had for him transcended his ability to make the world right. Even though he did not have all of the answers and the magic to heal everyone's hearts, they loved him so much that they could eat him up. Don't you know that in your life with the people around you? Don't you know that no matter how hard it is in staying and how sad it is in leaving, the love in your life is as large as those monsters themselves? How incredible is it that we have ability to go on loving when we are hurt or sad or far-off? These are the lessons that Max is learning in his own prodigal tale. He comes home and finds his meal is still hot. Everything is where it should be, but that doesn't make tomorrow any easier. Max has to go through the life-long process of growing up. He has to live out the relationships that he saw with the monsters. His return doesn't make tomorrow perfect. But that doesn't make it wrong, either. It makes it beautiful.