I ended up paying for my friend Jon, because I didn’t much want to go alone and no one had both time and money. So I was sitting in the dark next to him, watching the movie begin, and I began to shiver. Max (Max Records) was running wild, and it was clear that he didn’t know why he was so angry. It was clear that he couldn’t explain it to anyone and couldn’t stop himself. He was angry as much at himself as at anyone else. And I, too, had been Max.
When I was in elementary school, I started acting out like Max. I screamed and struggled and fought—and, yes, I bit my mother at least once. My mother reacted to this in two main ways. One, she would drag me—and, yes, it took force—into the bathroom, where I couldn’t hurt anyone, including myself. And two, she got me into therapy where I was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I have been struggling with it since I was Max’s age, though blessedly, I seldom have that blind, overpowering rage anymore. But when I told my mother that I recognized myself in Max’s behaviour, that it was what I had been like at that age, my mother decided she didn’t want to see the movie.
In many ways, Max has an ordinary life. His parents are clearly divorced (by the time I was that age, my father was dead), and his mother (Catherine Keener) is trying to earn a living for them. His sister, Claire (Pepita Emmerichs) is in probably junior high, at the age where she’s trying to be a grown-up but is still a child in many ways. This means she isn’t much interested in playing The Floor Is Lava with her younger brother to get to his Fortress That Is Also a Rocket. And Max’s mom has a Boyfriend, who has the temerity to be Mark Ruffalo. So Max, in frustration and anger and emotions he can’t even put a name to, runs off and sails off and reaches The Island of the Wild Things, where he convinces them that he should be their king. And at first, things are great, and he is in several ways a pretty good king. But on the other hand, whenever the Wild Things are unhappy, they are inclined to blame Max for not making everything perfect the way he said he would.
We don’t talk much about this movie. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered anyone in the last five years who told me they’d seen it. And I think the reason for this is that it explores some of the more painful aspects of childhood. Max is full of ideas; he’s a bright kid. But like even neurotypical kids, he’s full of secret fears and anxieties. His teacher gives his class an extremely detailed lesson about the death of the Sun (said Jon, next to me, “But what does this have to do with spelling?”), and Max is afraid in ways he can’t articulate. Because seriously, it’s the Sun. It can’t die, can it? The fact that the teacher assures them the human race will be long gone by then so doesn’t help, either.
The joy of The Island of the Wild Things is that you can build a fortress with an ice cream parlor and a detective agency and a machine that cuts people’s brains out if they try to get in and you don’t want them to, and you can’t do that in the Real World. But even when you’re having a Great Dirt Clod War, it turns out that people get hurt for real, and Max doesn’t want that. The Island of the Wild Things is supposed to be freedom, but Max is still Max.
I think today is the first time I’ve watched this movie since it came out, even though I’ve owned it pretty much since it came out on DVD. (My copy is previously viewed from somewhere.) However, I will still sometimes sit in quiet pain, thinking about Max destroying his sister’s room without even knowing why, just so filled with anger that it needs to vent somewhere or he’ll explode. And inside Max are all those Wild Things, each a different part of him. The angry one. The creative one. The quiet one. And best known to children everywhere, the one to whom no one listens.
