Tarkovsky's film would make a good campanion piece to Klimov's COME AND SEE. The Criterion disc is very good quality.

I have the criterion release in my home collection. nonetheless, it's been awhile since i've viddied it. maybe this weekend. sometimes i think it's my favorite tarkovsky film....but that's a hard choice....

Saw IVAN'S CHILDHOOD years ago, and haven't found time to watch the Criterion DVD yet. I remember liking it very much, very powerful film.

whoa!

isn't that an amazing film? it's time for me to see it again.

I watched IVAN'S CHILDHOOD the night after seeing this: what a different view of childhood!

yeah, that is also how i read it. when he's on his journey to to the wild things, that's when it suggests he travelled a long way....but that's obviously just there to let you know he is going to another place....but like you, i was always under the impression that he never actually left the building.

i'm going to have to see the film before i comment further.

But at the end of the book, when he comes back, it says that "his dinner was there waiting for him. And it was still hot." Leading me to believe it was all in the same night, and the kid just had a fun imaginative adventure in his room. Obviously he never left the room so he couldn't have been 'gone' for that long.

but that's not clearly stated in the book either...he went far away...sendak (smartly) doesn't say how long he's been gone or where he went.

i haven't seen it yet...but i still want to, despite the probably flaws. i love that book and am prepared for the film to be different...fair enough. so many adults love the book i can sort of see why he made it for adults...

Oh ya, the not having it appear in his room thing bothered me too.

I wondered how long he had been gone. I mean, when he was in his room, we know it was only a few hours or so. But since he traveled, I wasn't sure if it was still the same night that he came home.

I went with my daughter and my 5-year-old grandson and all three of us really enjoyed it. I agree that it isn't a kid's movie, but depending on the child,...well, my grandson sat quietly and watched every bit of the movie, and the first words out of his mouth after the last scene were "I want to see that again!" I agree with your stated "major flaw," Alex. I would have been more pleased with Max going to his room and making the dream journey.

Ya, either a person hated it or liked it it seems. I got mixed feelings from friends. But I went and saw it. Wasn't too bad, but I dragged my friend along with me, and she brought her husband (I was like, for real, you brought him to this?). She didn't seem to like it, I thought it was okay.

This is one of those movies -- I guess I should see it, just to keep up my movie literacy, it has gotten a lot of attention both pro and con, and I just can't bring myself to shell out the bucks to sit through it.

I wasn't sure if I was going to like this. I was in San Antonio this weekend and caught it at a tiny theatre packed with children...who did everything but watch the movie. I came away with the feeling that this isn't a children's movie at all because they seemed bored: it is for the comatose child whose imagination has atrophied that resides in the spirit of adulthood, but often never wakens. It made me feel good.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE (Spike Jonze, 2009, USA) Max learns that growing up doesn’t mean you have to lose all your baby teeth. Director Spike Jonze adapts the Maurice Sendak classic about the child who lives inside us all, filled with wonder, terror, anxiety and, most of all, love. Jonze expands a few hundred words into a feature length narrative, adding depth to Max’s family drama and allowing his wild rumpus upon the island of misfit monsters to become an extended metaphor concerning parental angst. The wonderful cinematography utilizes hand-held cameras and focuses from Max’s powerless perspective, shooting from low angles so the world of grown-ups seems large and domineering, and a crushing weight upon his maturing psyche. Max has his tenuous hopes crushed like a fragile snow fort, vying for his family’s attention but always being pushed aside: he’s a little boy competing with older men (his mother’s beau and sister’s boyfriend) for the love he so desperately needs. But this isn’t really a children’s film; it is a story for adults who desire to recapture the quicksilver imagination of youth, who have forgotten that dreams can conquer fear, and happiness is but a simple bowl of warm soup…and a mother’s smile. The film’s power is in evoking these childhood musings, and I was flooded with forgotten memories of a Maple tree that scraped ominously at my window like a monstrous claw; playing games as we embarked upon the great Arctic trek walking deftly on the slick ice that coated the snow, and if we broke through we’d die; trying to walk from one end of the house to the other without touching the floor because it was filled with lava; or the endless dirt-ball battles that would leave us crying and laughing, still young enough to be bathed together by our parents. It also reflects the dark fears that haunt childhood, ones which we often repress; those of loneliness and misunderstanding. Max runs away and creates his own world, but soon discovers that being a parent is difficult business because he can’t make his disciples happy: they must find their own way, though love is an integral integer in life’s equation. Jonze’s film is arguably plotless and composed of emotional vignettes, but that’s how children view their routines when life is taken moment by moment. The major flaw I find is in the depiction of Max running away instead of escaping in his own bedroom: what mother would sit idly by when their child disappears into the dark snowy night? The soundtrack is playfully unique, a helter-skelter of driving rhythms and angelic harmonies. The final mise-en-scene is delightfully subdued, without words, emotions expressed with the subtlest of gestures. Life is good. (B)