Adult films in furry clothing
The Age
Tuesday December 15, 2009
Where the Wild Things Are and Fantastic Mr Fox are as adult as any other film by Spike Jonze or Wes Anderson, writes Stephanie Bunbury. WHEN is a children's film unsuitable for children? Two of this season's biggest tickets, Where the Wild Things Are and Fantastic Mr Fox, have flummoxed critics and parents. Will children be frightened by monsters who rip each other's arms off and destroy their own houses in anger, as they do in Spike Jonze's adaptation of Sendak's prize-winning picture book?Or will they just be bored by their melancholic kvetching, as they may also be by Wes Anderson's Mr Fox insisting on calling other animals by their Latin names? And if they are, who are these films for?Where the Wild Things Are was first published in 1963. The film, with its disturbing rumpus between people dressed in huge monster suits and its passages of anxious mumblecore, is perhaps more a film for those who remember reading the book when they were little than it is for its current readers. Spike Jonze, certainly, has repeatedly said that he did not set out to make a film for children, but a film about childhood aimed at anyone. Or, perhaps, aimed at himself.In this, he is at one with the author. Maurice Sendak €” who was the prime mover in persuading Jonze to make the film €” once said he did not believe in childhood. His book, driven by drawings at least as dark as anything in Jonze's film, is apparently all about his own feelings of uncertainty; he never told his parents he was gay, he told The New York Times last year, as "all I wanted was to be straight and make them happy". So when Jonze and Dave Eggers, his writing partner, set out to write a script in which the monsters of the picture book would become manifestations of loneliness, fear and anxiety, this was entirely of a piece with the original.Anderson, by contrast, has said quite flatly that if you adapt a children's story, the result has to be suitable for children. Accordingly, the tone of Fantastic Mr Fox is upbeat; if anything, Anderson's smart-mouthed version is rather less anarchic and feral than Roald Dahl's own story.Even so, while Foxy pits himself against a trio of agribusiness monsters whose mean ways are certainly recognisable to children €” as the ogres of fairytale, or perhaps the nasty neighbour who won't give you your ball back €” only adults will be able to give a name to their wild-eyed neo-liberalism. And Fantastic Mr Fox is, when all is said and done, a Wes Anderson film featuring one of his characteristically uncomfortable families. Mr Fox even wears Anderson's corduroy suits.There is nothing new about the idea of making a children's film adults can enjoy: witness The Simpsons on television. Most children's animations, in fact, include jokes to make sure the adults who bought the tickets don't get too bored. A few, such as this year's Up!, are at least as popular with adults as children. Some critics have accordingly included Up!, a Pixar animation, in the same category as Where the Wild Things Are and Fantastic Mr Fox. But while it is true that its gentle story of the grumpy old man charmed back to happiness by a chirpy little boy charmed many adults, it isn't made of the same stuff. Up! is driven, for example, by state-of-the-art 3D. Jonze and Anderson, by contrast, have turned their backs on the latest techy wizardry, choosing to tell their stories in ways that are old-fashioned enough to seem clunky. Jonze's live-action film depicts monsters using actors in fluffy suits; Anderson uses old-fashioned stop-motion with puppets covered in fur. Only adults share this nostalgia for the home-made.But it's not just a matter of aesthetics. What is really significant is that both these films avoid €” as Up!, whatever its virtues, patently does not €” any kind of sticky sentimentality. They deliver no moral lessons. Both films are about love, but nobody has to talk about it to make the point. Both films also deal with emotional pain, but without the usual banal promise that every problem can be solved."Children are much more complicated and diverse than we often think they are or give them credit for," wrote one concerned parent on the internet in a recommendation for Where the Wild Things Are. They certainly are, but that doesn't mean these are primarily films for children €” certainly not for all children. They are adults' films in furry clothing, their whimsy and wackiness appealing precisely because they liberate us from the limits of adult subject matter and launch us, like so many Maxes in paper boats, on to the seas of fantasy. It makes sense to me, because for people like Wes Anderson and Spike Jonze, what could be more resonant than the books loved in childhood?Where the Wild Things Are is screening now.Fantastic Mr Fox opens on New Year's Day.
© 2009 The Age
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