By Louis Peitzman
Like the book on which it’s based, Where the Wild Things Are is open to interpretation. There are no easy answers here, and don’t expect to get any help from the enigmatic filmmakers. When I interviewed director and co-writer Spike Jonze, co-writer Dave Eggers, and actor Catherine Keener in a roundtable at the Ritz-Carlton, one reporter asked, “Do you think the Wild Things are reflections of Max’s own personality, the people around Max, or just something else entirely?
To which Eggers replied, “Yes.”
It was stressed repeatedly that afternoon: Where the Wild Things Are is intentionally open-ended. Jonze’s goal is not to confound or frustrate his audience so much as to give them space to use their imaginations, much in the same way Max — the film’s pint-sized hero — creates a world into which he can escape.