The basic, obvious narrative of what happens to Max doesn't follow the expected norms, it doesn't have rise/fall sort of placing, but instead follows real life narrative which doesn't have those convenient trappings, or the narrative of how kids tell a story as random sequences of events. This is something I actually really like about the film. As a writer, I'm really bored of the normal, expected and tired ideas of a story. Sometimes events are just phases and they meet their end once they find that end. Even though there is not a classic quest narrative or anything like that, when you see the mother smile at the end and fall asleep, you, or maybe I should say I feel completion.
There are other, more interesting narratives, the kind that normally exist in good stories, the ones beyond the basic plot. The visual narrative of the egg/womb shapes in the story is one I've been thinking about. The first egg is the igloo, and it coincides with a distant sister who doesn't listen to him, and then 'rumpus' with her friends who don't understand the secret rules of the igloo and jump on it to smash it. In Max's mind, the igloo is a fortress and you shouldn't just crush it. He feels clever in having thrown the snow balls and then retreated to his hideout, but in the teen world it's just snow to be crushed. The next egg is the monster pile, and here too, Max feels endagered because these monsters are landing one after another on top of him, with a mix of the child-like play Max enjoys and the big, adult danger of the igloo smashing. At the bottom of the egg he finds K.W., who gives the elder female/motherly comfort to restore this egg as safe. The next egg, which I didn't think about the first time through, is Carol's model of his ideal world, where Max pokes his head up through the hole to see the city. Max is peering through another person's egg here, another's dream/fantasy and he is buying into it and creates the fortress from it, which becomes the ultimate egg/womb. But of course that womb is partly Carol's idea and becomes a shared egg and there's lots of issues with combining different fantasies and imaginations, just as there is in childlike play where the 'king' or creator of the play wants to continue his/her fantasy, but runs into trouble when others want to put in their imagination. Does it mesh? Yes and no, and conflict and emotions result.
There is also the play narrative, how Max deals with troubles and emotions through play. I won't go all the way through that one, but it links into the egg narrative obviously, and it is here that Max has to learn how to deal with people and emotions through ways other than play. And once he does, he is no longer King of the Wild Things, no longer a wild thing/monster himself, and like the vampire who lost his teeth, he leaves the others of his kind for no longer being believed as one of them. Max goes from the physical play world of dealing with emotions to the verbal/expressive world of dealing with emotions. Or the boy way of dealing with emotions to the girl way of dealing with emotions.
So, anyways, I find a lot there to be had in the movie. Plenty to rethink about.
