REVIEW: Beloved child book becomes thing of beauty on the screen

“Where the Wild Things Are” is too simple to be understood by adults.

Only a child can truly grasp it (even though this film is in no way intended for them). Reach down deep and find the child who still lives within you. See this film through that child’s unobstructed eyes.

Those who take pleasure in and “get” this marvelous, mesmeric film will do so because they see something of themselves in the small boy at its center.

“Where the Wild Things Are” opens in a snowy, suburban world very obviously bleached of anything like fantasy. It is here, among an adoring but distracted mother (Catherine Keener) and an insensitive older sister, that young Max (Max Records) — clever, creative and lonely — creates and populates whole worlds with his mind. His room is strewn with telescopes, globes and model ships — the tools of an explorer. He constructs igloos and forts made out of bed sheets and commands armies invisible to all but him. Imagination in isolation can be awe-inspiring.

But all is not well with Max. The boy’s father is gone; be it through divorce or death, we are not told. Feeling neglected and craving stability and comfort, Max has taken to acting out, channeling his pain into unbridled aggression he can neither understand nor control.

After a particularly bad row with his mom, Max, dressed in his old, whiskered wolf costume, flees into the woods near their home, where he discovers a boat that takes him across the sea to an island inhabited by glum, despondent monsters (voiced by James Gandolfini, Lauren Ambrose, Forest Whitaker, Chris Cooper, Catherine O’Hara and Paul Dano).

There, among the outcasts and the misunderstood, Max finds a place of belonging and it makes him brave. The monsters mistake him for a king and Max promises to end loneliness forever. He commands a massive stick fort to be built, within which they can all sleep together as one big furry pile.

But Max is not a king and he has no special powers to remake this new world. Soon, the monsters will find out he is only an ordinary boy and when they do, their anger will be monstrous. After all, if monsters are not dangerous, they can hardly be considered wild.

The monsters in “Where the Wild Things Are,” with names like Carol, Judith and Ira, are clearly different manifestations of Max’s personality. They are pure, unchecked emotions, unregulated by maturity. They have bad tempers, their feelings are easily hurt and their egos are riotously unstable.

Listen closely to what the monsters say. Their words and actions ultimately reveal them to be giant children.

When Max confesses at last that he is incapable of fulfilling his promises, he offers, “I wish you guys had a mom.” Max, it turns out, cannot “make everything OK” and as such is not ready to be a king/adult. He sails back home, a humbled boy ready to embrace a mother for whom empathy is now guaranteed.

“Where the Wild Things Are” is an adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s beloved children’s book. If you take issue with the film, blame Sendak, who chose Spike Jonze (“Being John Malkovich”) to direct (Michel Gondry would have been another exceptional choice). For “Wild Things” is bound to disappoint on one level or another, be it through the desire for fanatical fidelity to the source material (which, incidentally, consists of only nine sentences) or surrender to the inevitable hype surrounding the film. But Jonze, collaborating with Sendak and writer Dave Eggers (“Away We Go”), has made a luminous translation of the source material.

The best adaptations are rarely faithful; they augment and enhance. And that is what Jonze has done here, taking the wispy allegorical nature of the book — the boy who must master his feelings — and turning it into an enchanting fable about childhood made for grown-ups, complete with musings on relationships, family and even mortality.

This is not a film for children. It’s not that the material is objectionable (it’s not), but the manner in which it unpacks its themes leads to a convoluted density and languid pace that will challenge many adult viewers, let alone kids.

The film, which takes the classic book in some uncomfortable, melancholy new directions, fashions an emotional texture beguiling to most adults but probably bewildering to children.

Slow films are merely opportunities to luxuriate in the surroundings, and there is plenty here in which to luxuriate. Jonze and Co. have seized on an ephemeral dream, a weird, surreal mind trip akin to the fevered imagination of Salvador Dali. For all of its impeccable style, it maintains a primitive, primeval feel. The effects — a combination of live action costuming, animatronics and CGI — are so astonishing and so natural that you’re likely to almost overlook them completely, so perfectly does the magic meld into the real.

The monsters’ appearances, as well as their emotions, are every bit as authentic as the flesh and blood boy with whom they interact.

“Those who don’t believe in Magic,” said another cherished children’s author, Roald Dahl, “will never find it.” This melancholy masterpiece, about the search for love and the sorrows of growing up, is eager to say so very much about the sometimes fragile, often disconcerting and tragically predetermined membrane that separates childhood from adulthood — if we still have the ability to comprehend the language.

GRADE: A-

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

Cast: Max Records, Catherine Keener

Director: Spike Jonze

Theaters: Carmike, Chapel Hills, Cinemark, Cinemark IMAX, Hollywood, Kimball’s, Tinseltown

Rated: PG (for mild thematic elements, some adventure action and brief language)

Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes