Big Fan

Paul Aufiero is a New York Giants fan and little else. A schlubby loser and all too aware of it, Paul sinks into a sort of self-induced coma whenever forced to confront reality. We watch Paul, dead-faced and long-hardened by a life of misery and failure, as he punches parking tickets at the garage he works at and as he sits through his nephew's birthday surrounded by family members whose wretchedness he knows is eclipsed only by his own. Paul's life is a monotonous series of defeats. Rather than step up to change his life, Paul has opted to instead seek escape. He doesn't just follow the New York Giants. He lives through them. 'How can a sports game ever really be important?' is a question often asked. For Paul, nothing else is more important. And it is that Paul has invested his entire emotional well-being into a meaningless enterprise (and one whose success Paul has no effect over) that Big Fan director Robert D. Siegel finds the paradox that defines Big Fan's sad and confused protagonist.

In the scene that sets Paul's life off its mundane course, Paul and his friend spot Giants' quarterback Quantrell Bishop at a gas station and follow him into a club where they eventually confront him. We have seen before how Paul obsesses over Bishop, defending the player on his local radio's call-in sports talk program and proudly wearing Bishop's jersey during each Giants game. Bishop is the Giants' star player, and he is thus Paul's star too. Siegel subtly suggests with lingering camera movements over Bishop's physique as Paul glances at his poster of the QB that Paul's infatuation with the man might be even partly sexual. Unfortunately for Paul though, by a misunderstanding and a few ill-placed remarks from Paul's friend, Bishop turns on his adorer, beating Paul so severely that it isn't for three days until Paul finally awakens in the hospital. The police want to press charges against Bishop and Paul's family urges him to sue. However, doing so, Paul knows, would jeopardize the Giants' playoff chances. Paul now finds himself in the realization of a lifelong dream but in the form a nightmare: his choices actually affect his team, but what's best for his team is neither just nor best for him.

Paul's struggle to cope with the fantasy world of the Giants' now representing not an escape for Paul but only more cold, hard reality leads to a Giants fan/Eagles fan confrontation that contains more genuine suspense than if the actual two teams were to clash. Donning an Eagles jersey and smearing his face with the green and white colors of the Giants' rivals, Paul enters the Philly bar where he knows lurks his enemy: a Giants-loathing Eagles fan who calls into the same sports radio program that Paul does. As we watch Paul stumble further and further into the bar, draped in the garb he has so come to hate and surrounded by cheering, beer-swilling Eagles fans, we know that for Paul, this journey is no less than a descent into hell. The brilliant irony of this scene is that it is filmed in such a way as to call back to our minds an earlier scene of celebrating, beer-guzzling Giants fans who, aside from their different-colored attire, are in no way distinguishable from the Eagles fans. Paul is so tied to his world of delusion that he fails to make this connection, and for him the Eagles fans are the epitome of all that is evil. As the scene goes on, Paul's face is transformed by the colored paint into something of a grotesque clown's, laughing one moment and contorting into horror by what he is doing the next.

In Big Fan, Robert Siegel takes a long, hard look at those face-painted, adoring sports fans for whom a game is so much more than a game. The result is an intimate character study and a thematic exploration of obsession, both why it develops and how dangerous it can be. In the film's final scene, both chilling and darkly humorous, Siegel suggests that for some, delusion will always triumph over reality. "There's always next year" has never sounded so bleak.

Where the Wild Things Are

There are spoilers in this essay if you haven't seen the film. You have been warned.

One way I can usually gauge the greatness of a movie is by observing how long the movie lingers in my mind after I've seen it. No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, and Wall-E, for instance, remained in my thoughts months after I'd seen them. The Informant!, on the other hand, I enjoyed but it had so little impact on me that I'd practically forgotten that I'd seen it not but thirty minutes after walking out the theater. Where the Wild Things Are, it seems, is a film that will sit in the ranks of the former group of movies. It's been over a day since I've seen the film and I have yet to shake its sad and beautiful tone from my mind. All of this is indication to me that I've just seen a Great Movie. And so, if you'll allow me, here are my thoughts on the film...

One interpretation of Where the Wild Things Are that I've seen in a lot of critical analyses of the film is that it's about "being a kid." I think that's certainly part of what the movie is about, but I feel like that's overlooking a crucial element of the movie. Let's turn to the movie's screenwriters to illustrate what I mean. Oft neglected in praises of Wild Things is Dave Eggers, who co-wrote the film with director Spike Jonze. Unbeknownst to most, Eggers actually co-wrote another film this year, the delightful Away We Go. Perhaps if more people had made this screenplay-credit connection, then more might also have made the critical thematic connection between the two films as well. You see, Where the Wild Things Are isn't just about being a kid, it's about being a kid in a broken family. The film is an exploration of a boy struggling with his parents' divorce.

This is not to say, of course, that the film is only about being a child if the child comes from a broken home. In fact, one of the greatest strengths of the movie is the way it perfectly (and so incredibly effortlessly) captures what it is like to be a nine year old. The desire to build forts. The wild emotional swings. The way a game can instantly turn from fun and laughter to tears and anger. How an adult can thoughtlessly make a remark that will impact a child far more deeply than the remark was intended to (I'm referring here to Max's teacher's comment on the dying of our sun). That Jonze and Eggers have painted one of the truest, boldest portraits of childhood in film to date goes nearly undisputed. It's just that Wild Things runs deeper than that.

One recurring trend I've noticed on Internet boards discussing the film is people trying to determine what aspects of Max's life each Wild Thing embodies. These discussions typically involve lists of each of the characters, describing them in terms like "KW=Max's Sister, Alexander=Max's sensitive side" and so on. While the film certainly does contain a running motif of the Wild Things corresponding to Max's "real world" life, I eschew using the terminology in trying to interpret the film that these Internet commenters employ. It's too much like reducing the film to an equation, and I have to imagine that that's something the makers of the film would highly discourage.

I think a better way to examine the movie is on the basis of what it means to you personally. I know that one goal Spike Jonze strives for is to create films that don't try to elicit a specific emotion from the viewer but that simply let the viewer react to the movie however he or she reacts, with no reaction being a wrong one. That doesn't mean that there's no objective meaning present in Where the Wild Things Are, it just means that your subjective reaction to the work is much more important than how closely your interpretation of the film matches the filmmakers'. That caveat out of the way, let's now turn to my personal interpretation of the film.

One interesting question raised by Where the Wild Things Are is in what sense the fantasy world of the film exists. Is it purely the creation of the child protagonist? Is it some actual, physical world perhaps in some other dimension? Or is it something completely different? The former interpretation tends to be the more popular one but I take issue with that view because it removes the film of any real danger. If Max lives out his adventures entirely in his head, then at no point does his plight pose any true threat to him. Max could've been torn limb from limb by the Wild Things and it wouldn't have really mattered. It would have all just been in his head. This interpretation, I feel, just really cheapens the film. On the other hand, the theory that Wild Things Island is a real geographical location seems highly improbable to me. If this is so, why then do the Wild Things so strongly correspond to Max's life and problems? Also, just where did they come from? How do they reproduce? This theory is equally if not more problematic than the first.

My interpretation of Wild Things World falls somewhere in the middle of these two theories. I think the fantasy island exists both separately from and entirely within Max's mind. The island is a world that does have a real existence apart from Max but that existence resides solely within the minds of lonely children. In other words, the Wild Things are in Max's head, yes, but they're also separate from Max because they're a part of all lonely kids. Well if it's all in Max's head, you might say, then doesn't that theory still pose the problem that Max is never in danger? Well, yes and no. I think there's a critical scene in Where the Wild Things Are that eliminates this problem: when the Wild Things show Max the skeletons of the kings of the past. "You're the first king we haven't eaten," Alexander remarks. The skeletons mean for me all those children who could not overcome their emotional frustration and isolation and essentially were eaten alive by their own emotions. The creatures may be in Max's mind but he is still very much at the risk of being "eaten" by them.

This brings me to something I touched upon before, the idea of the Wild Things as aspects of Max's life. Remember, while it is valid to interpret the movie in this way, don't get too bogged down with who equals who details. The movie is a story, not an equation. That said, I do have my own interpretation of what each of the Wild Things might represent. Let's first think of Wild Things island as Max's journey into his own mind where he can observe his place in the world and his own mental state. Carol, the main Wild Thing, is a proxy for Max, which is why Max is drawn most to him. Other Wild Things represent aspects of Max's personality too. Alexander is Max's insecurity. This is why he is smaller than all the other Wild Things and often feels neglected and not listened to, as Max does in the beginning of the film. Douglas and Ira are perhaps pleasanter aspects of Max, his wisdom and his good sense maybe.

KW, Judith, and the Bull exemplify Max's relationships to his family members. I've seen people characterize KW and Judith as "Judith=Max's mom" and "KW=Max's sister," but I disagree with that interpretation. I think KW and Judith are both Max's mom and Max's sister. Judith is the nagging, frustrated mom and sister of Max who yell at him and make him feel angry and insecure. KW is the loving, tender mom and sister of Max who Carol, representative of Max, is afraid of losing. "She only wants to hang out with her new friends, Bob and Terry," Carol tells Max.

Later in the movie, when KW introduces Max to Bob and Terry, we discover that they are two snowy white owls. All the Wild Things seem to understand the owls, but to Max and Carol the owls' speech sounds only like mindless hoots. This frustrates Carol who then lashes out at KW and her owl friends, causing KW to retreat further from Carol and Carol to grow all the more desperate and alone.

Here we've hit at the core of the film, I believe. Bob and Terry are, in the real world, the people who would take Max's mother and sister away from him: Mom's new boyfriend and Sister's new friends. Max doesn't understand the conversations of any of these new figures in his life; to them, they're just opponents taking his family away from him. So he yells and stomps and acts like a Wild Thing. And his mother and sister don't understand why he's doing what he's doing, and Max doesn't know how better to express himself. The emotional gap between them only further widens. That, I think, is a large part of what the movie is about: the inability of children to communicate their emotions to adults. A lot of people have interpreted the ending of the movie as a happy one, but I'm not so sure. In the final scene of the movie, not a single word transpires between Max and his mother. They just look at each other, completely in love, but still utterly unable to express themselves.

This brings me at last to what I claimed was the heart of the film: Max's parents' divorce. In the opening segment of Where the Wild Things Are, we only see the briefest glimpses of Max's father. He is an item resting on Max's shelf. He is the man who should be talking to, sitting with, and loving Max's mother (and Max). He is his own absence. In the Wild Things world, Jonze portrays this through The Bull. A somber, silent figure throughout the film, The Bull resides in the background, lingering, hanging over Max's world. He is not Max's father, he is the absence of Max's father. A conspicuous glaring reminder of something that should be but isn't, always looming over everything else.

And while the film is still about the communication gap between children and adults, the film suggests this gap can only be overcome when a child is given a whole and loving family. Max's life becomes a demonstration of how shattered a child's world is when it's set in a broken home. Max is deeply attached to his mother. Her new boyfriend is tearing her away from him, he thinks. This terrifies him. So he goes crazy which drives his mother further away.

If Max only had a caring father in his life, his mother wouldn't have a new boyfriend to upset him so. And while, yes, Max's sister is going to slip away from Max regardless of Max's parents' state, I think Max's bond with his mother is much more important to him (and he's much more afraid of losing of her) than he is with his sister. The film, then, is essentially saying this: "Children and adults are incapable of truly understanding each other. If a child is given a loving mother and father, then this will almost certainly prevent the child from having emotional issues. If a child is deprived of both a loving mother and father though, this will deeply emotionally wound the child and because, as we said before, children and adults can't communicate, a broken family may, like the Wild Things, eat the child up."

That is the core of the film reduced to a few sentences, I think. I realize I must've written a few pages' worth of material now and I still feel as though I've only scratched the surface of the film in this essay. There are so many moments of pure cinematic beauty that I haven't even mentioned yet. For instance, that transitional shot between the real world and the fantasy world--a wide shot of Max in his little boat, enveloped by a sea so dark and enormous that in one moment we know we're no longer in the real world--was my favorite part in the film. The music too I have thus far neglected to mention. How haunting, mournful, and poetic a quality those plaintive Karen O songs and that Carter Burwell score brought to the movie. I don't think pop music has been used in film to conjure a very specific and entirely unique tone this effectively since Juno two years ago. And Max... Max Records is one of the most gifted child actors in history. I have never seen a truer portrayal of a child onscreen before and I doubt I ever will again. If that boy is not nominated for a Best Actor Oscar this winter, the Academy will have committed an unforgivable snub.

But I suppose I should stop reciting the film's technical merits before I fall into the realm of hyperbole (which I probably have already). This review is long enough as it is, and I'm more than sure I've violated that ancient rule of writing "Say only what you need to say and then shut up." I hope you enjoyed reading this review, if you actually made it this far. I wrote it mostly to extract and organize my own thoughts on the film for my own benefit, but if this review helped you appreciate the film more, then all the better. If you found that you didn't like Where the Wild Things Are on your first viewing, I encourage you to go back and revisit the film. I think it will grow on you with time. After all, there's a Wild Thing in all of us.