Where-The-Wild-Things-Are-Review-o-rama

Ab Freitag wird Spike Jonzes Kinderbuch-Adaption WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE (WO DIE WILDEN KERLE WOHNEN) in den amerikanischen Kinos zu sehen sein. Und ab heute scheint das Internet überzulaufen mit lobpreisenden und bewegenden Kritiken. Als ich so eine Kritik nach der anderen las und überflog wusste ich, dass ich einige Ausschnitte posten muss.

Grundsätzlich denke ich nicht, dass eine Kritik immer den eigenen Standpunkt bestätigen sollte (auch wenn das manchmal der erste Impuls ist. Das Gegenteil ist der Fall. Die hoffentlich durch mehr Hintergrundwissen geprägte Perspektive von einem sagen wir mal Filmexperten, der schon tausend Filme mehr als ich gesehen hat kann mein eigenes Gedankenspektrum über das Gesehene sicherlich um viele Perspektiven und Einsichten erweitern. So viel zum Thema Kritken lesen, nach dem Sehen eines Films.

Wo Die Wilden Kerle Wohnen habe ich aber selbstverständlich noch gar nicht gesehen. Und ob man sich diesen Film nun anschauen sollte oder nicht ist wohl auch nicht mehr die Frage beziehungsweise wird wahrscheinlich in den meisten Fällen nicht mehr von einer Kritik abhängig gemacht.

Manchmal ist es allerdings einfach schön sich von der Begeisterung und dem Enthusiasmus, den ein Mensch für einen Film empfindet beglücken zu lassen: (Wenn ihr auf die Namen unter den Zitaten klickt, was ich empfehle, gelangt ihr zu den Reviews in ihrer ganzen Länge.)

>>Mr. Jonze deserves a Congressional Medal of Freedom for pulling this shit off. In a genre where movies are always shaped around Happy Meal and doll tie-ins I swear he's made a movie without a single commercial compromise or concession to Hollywood formula. He's not trying to bullshit you or your kids, he's tapping straight into a kid mentality, which doesn't mean poop jokes and Hannah Montana references, it's more primal. At times in this movie I felt like it was making me regress to being a little kid, remembering the simple joy of throwing things, breaking things, building things, making up stories, and also the feeling of being hurt by small things like mom or big sister won't pay attention to you exactly when you want, so you go hide in your room and feel sorry for yourself. Max has those feelings and then Carol, a wild thing portrayed brilliantly by the voice of James Gandolfini, amplifies them to giant size. He represents the needy side of a kid, the one that feels sorry for himself and gets angry too easily (which leads to the much hyped make-kids-cry part of the movie when he briefly chases Max claiming he's gonna "eat him up." But don't worry kids, he's full of shit. He's got no follow through on shit like that.) Carol is a character like I've never seen before - a monster who's only scary because he's so emotionally fragile you gotta walk on egg shells around him. They should try that in a Godzilla movie some time. << (Vern)

>>Max is a physical kid, one who bounds and jumps and burrows and rolls down hills. It's pretty likely that Max is going to get older and discover skate boards, and punk rock. In many ways Where the Wild Things Are is the secret origin of Jackass. Or the fairy tale version.

The Jackass quality isn't just in the character of Max; Where the Wild Things Are has the look of some of the better Jackass material, much of which was directed by Jonze. Jonze hasn't hidden his own style away in adapting Maurice Sendak's seminal (and seriously short) children's book for the screen, but has instead made the work his own. He hasn't bowed to preconceived concepts of what a kid's movie should look, sound or smell like and has instead made a Spike Jonze movie that is about kids. Narratively loose and emotionally free-associative, the film is highly impressionistic and... well, for lack of a better word, arty. Does that make for a good kid's movie? I don't know, but it does make for a damn good movie. << (Devin Faraci)

>>WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is the very best film I’ve seen this year. Not by a hair, not by a nose, but by a mile. More than that, it could very well be the best film ever created about what it is like to be a 9 year old.
Do you remember?
9 years old.
How did you play? How did you move? Do you remember the angles that you saw the world from? Did you ever start something that felt like the most fun thing in the world, until it wound up in tears. << (Harry Knowles)

>>Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers (with some late-in-the-game help from Charlie Kaufman) have used Sendak's book as a springboard for a screenplay that reaches much deeper than what is typically passed off on children. I think there's something profoundly cynical and borderline evil about the way Hollywood treats children as idiots, churning out one lowest-common-denominator piece of garbage after another for what they see of as the easiest audience. When they took "Cat In The Hat" and turned it from a charming comic piece about how to handle the boredom of a rainy day and turned it into a loud, noisy, ugly, grotesque fart-and-boner joke, it seemed indicative of the way the system fails young viewers time and again. And certainly, there was potential for "Where The Wild Things Are" to suffer the same fate.<< (Drew McWeeny)

Die Filmgeekbloggerfront der ersten Stunde hat sich also in WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE verliebt. Und zum Glück teilt nicht jeder diese Meinung. (Wäre sonst sehr langweilig geworden.) Viel interessanter ist, finde ich, dass die einen (Geeks) in dem Film eine perfekte Rekonstruktion des emotionalen Innenlebens ihrer Kindheit vorfinden während Michelle Orange von movieline meint, dass Fans von erhabenen Denkmälern der Kindheit Jonzes Entscheidungen kritischer sehen werden. (Wenn ich das richtig verstanden habe.) A.O. Scott von der New York Times wiederum ist aber sowas von beeindruckt. Hier und dort gibt es noch mehr links zu Kritiken und Meinungen zu Wo die wilden Kerle wohnen.

(Edit: 15. Oktober, Abend)
Gerade habe ich dieses Interview von Jeremy Smith mit Spike Jonze gelesen und Jonzes folgende Beschreibung der Lebendigkeit eines Films fand ich irgendwie toll (ist alles andere als ein noch nie dagewesener Gedanke, aber die Art und Weise wie er das beschreibt, was viele Kritiker immer nur manipulativ nennen ist erleuchtend):

>>Beaks: Is that kind of melancholy something you were hoping to evoke? Was there a particular emotion you were hoping to evoke at the end of the film?

Jonze: I don't think I've ever worked that way. On my first two movies with Charlie Kaufman, we never worked in a way where we wanted the audience to feel this or that. We were just exploring and making the characters true to who we felt the characters should be; we weren't telling you you have to like this character or dislike this character. Something that Charlie and I have talked about is how our ambition is trying to make something that is alive... something that not everybody has the same reaction to. You're making something that is true to what you are feeling, but not forcing everyone to feel this way or that way. My favorite things are movies that I've seen and had one reaction to, and then I see it again years later and have a different reaction to it. It's alive in that way. It's not the same every time. I think a lot of times that a movie which tells people "Think this!" or "We want you to feel this and think this..." there's something dead about that. It's going to be the same every time.<<

Vorherige Artikel zu WTWTA auf First Snow: Der Trailer, NYT Spike Jonze Porträt, ein Beispiel für die wundersamen Links des WTWTA-blogs weloveyouso.com und eine erschütternde Aussage von Fred Rogers.

Bei uns kommt Wo Die Wilden Kerle Wohnen übrigens am 17. Dezember in die Kinos.