Day 50: Where The Wild Things Are

I recently saw this interview with Maurice Sendak at Open Culture, which itself is possible the best Web site online. Like just about every other kid who ever had "Where The Wild Things Are" read to him and then read himself a billion times over, I love the simplistic brilliance of the book and the illustrations and the deeper and deeper meaning I find in every time I flip the pages. And I'm still reading it some 40 years later. I've read it to all my children, including now my four-year-old, and I've read it for my own enjoyment even more. Some days, I'll just stare at the pages and forget about time and space. What a gift.

How does this book hold so much power and charm? How is it so completely engaging and frightful and happy and sad and peaceful and turbulent and uniting and dividing and painful and soothing simultaneously? I understand this book, yet I don't understand it a bit. How can a book with so few words be so universally appealing and demand every reader and looker's attention instantly? I don't know, and maybe these questions are not to be questioned. Magic is magic, after all.

I'm coming to feel the same about Spike Jonze's cinematic retelling. I've watched it on and off the past two days with my daughter, and I'm falling more and more in love with it. Again, simplistic brilliance. I can't pinpoint why the movie has sunk so deeply into my psyche, but I'm content to just it roll around in there a while and work its own magic. Perhaps my growing attachment stems from reveling in the inspiration Sendak had on Jonze who is now giving to others himself. Magic is magic.

My daughter and I just finished watching the movie again, and I would be content to just press Play and relive the last few hours all over with her. Her questions about the characters and their motivations and actions are so keen and spot on, I'm so fascinated to know exactly what thoughts are being created in her mind. I want a peek inside to know if she's seeing what I am, if she feeling the same emotions as me, etc.

I've seen a lot of movies, and I've read a lot of books, but I'm not sure there's been a better marriage where one book inspired a visual creation.