The Max I Know

(spoiler alerts as to the movie, but this is not a movie review)
Went to the movies to see the new Spike Jonze film, and was quite taken with the story adaptation as well as the beautiful costumes and the luscious scenery. If you don’t know the story, young Max is confronted with lots of changes in his life as his sister is growing up and getting new friends, and his mom is overworked and at the same time negotiating the dicey waters of dating while mothering.

Max is a creative and precious looking child, with an active imagination and a wonderfully buoyant lack of inhibitions. He dresses in a wolf suit, creates an igloo in the front yard, makes massive forts in his room and has islands of stacked books to protect himself, and his invited guests, from the lava flows.

But reality intrudes – dinner, adults, school, manners and worries. Max responds with energy and growls. Things escalate and he runs out the front door, through the neighbor’s yards, over a dilapidated fence and scrambles down a hill to the edge of the water. There he finds an abandoned boat and his real adventure begins.

The transition from reality to fantasy is tough on an adult. As I sat in the theater of course I thought of all the dangers that could befall a small boy in a beat-up boat on the water in a scary part of the world – New Jersey. But Max steers the boat, over a broad sea, through the night and a day and a night again to an island. Rough seas, rocky shore, thrashing waves, yet he’s able to steer the boat into shallow enough water that he can hop out and pull it to safety on the sand.

He sees a fire up on a promontory and he climbs up. It’s not an easy climb, and the shifting camera angles show the precariousness of his situation. Again, as an adult I can see the dangers and they would paralyze me, but Max simply stays alert and keeps going. Jonze perfectly captures the special kind of kid-courage that so many people have before age 10.

What Max finds is amazing. Large, powerful creatures with protruding noses, horns, sharp claws and vaguely familiar outlines. Supernaturally strong these creatures, The Wild Things, live in a community that is everything Max ever wanted. They have cleverly built huts or forts as homes, they have fires and they get to do whatever they want. They smash things, and bore holes and they can explore all day anywhere they want to go. And best of all they sleep all together in a real pile.

When Max arrives, there is a problem. It seems that one of their number is mad. I mean really, really mad. And because he’s mad he is smashing everyone’s hut. When a feeling of anger, or is it sadness, sweeps over him the monster smashes another fort. The others stand by and watch. The angry one becomes more and more isolated, and finally says “no one understands and no one cares so I’ll just be by myself” and this strikes a chord with Max. He leaps out of the bushes and joins in the destruction.

Without going into any more details of the movie I’ll just say that Max and Carol (played by James Gandolfini) and the other Wild Things bond, and build a communal fort, and go through some relationship changes that are pretty nuanced for a group of monsters and a small boy. They organize with Max as King and they have a terrific dirt-clod fight.

But in the end, Max decides to go home. And he sails back across the sea. And there are real emotions connected to this, and yet also smooth sailing and the movie comes to a close. And there is a satisfying click or thunk at the end as everything settles back into a place that is recognizable as home, family and “okayness.”

The thing that really struck me, that spurred me to sit down and write about it, is not so much the creativity and talent of Spike Jonze…but rather I know a Max. Really. A young man named Max. And I know that he has felt some of the same tumultuous emotions as the boy in the film. The Max that I know has also had difficulty with relationship and family changes, he has had great difficulty expressing himself and has often lost his temper and roared. I’m sure, although he’s never told me, that he has highly detailed inner worlds, peopled with wild things and these worlds collide and often find their way back with him as he tries to “come home.”

But Max, the Max I know, is not a cute little kid with a creative imagination. He is a 37 year old man with schizophrenia. He also has an older sister, and parents who divorced when he was young. He has a great love for his mother, but about fifteen years ago she could no longer deal with the strains and the pressures of his physicality and his illness. So he came to live with his father. And that’s how I met him. So there they are, two guys, living together doing the best they can. And Max, he has some serious issues with navigating life’s rocky shores.

He has a very wooly beard and long, scraggly hair. He’s not fond of baths or showers. He doesn’t like to clip his nails. He has a fondness for camouflage and other army cast off clothing, with all the pockets bulging. What’s in the pockets? Rocks. Feathers. String. A CD player. A can of Dr. Pepper. Bits of glass. Small books. Max smells bad. His eyes dart around and he doesn’t have a clear idea of all those assumed personal-space boundaries we’re all so fond of. In fact he’ll walk right up to me and stick his hand out and start talking about the last visit he had with his mom in Oregon while pumping my hand vigorously up and down and then immediately launch into a series of rapid-fire questions about the rings of Saturn and the craters of the moon.

I’ve learned to just float along with Max, and nod and smile and poke a word in edgewise every now and then. Abruptly he will turn and move on to someone else, or he’ll fling himself on the ground to look for bugs.

In a 9 year old it’s adorable, cute and charming. In a 37 year old it is awkward and, to many, scary.

I know Max is not dangerous. I know he loves his dad and his mom and in fact, I’m pretty sure he loves me too. He enjoys calling people on his birthday to tell us it is his birthday and give us the chance to wish him many happy returns of the day. I mean, how can you not like that? I don’t have to worry about hurting his feelings because I’ve forgotten his birthday – he decided it is HIS birthday so he calls and lets me know. There is a beautiful kind of personal responsibility in there somewhere.

But at the end of the movie I’m left with a deep sadness. Cute little Max in the movie makes it home, has some soup and a piece of chocolate cake and he probably grows up to be a successful children’s book author. Good story. Good movie. We’re all comfortable. Enjoyed the trip to Where The Wild Things Are.

But the Max I know? There doesn’t seem to be a boat ride “home.” He is a citizen of that world and at the same time he is also a citizen of ours. He cannot work, he has no health care, and he scares the shit out of people that he meets. He is of age and sometimes he just takes off and he will be gone for weeks at a time…living on the streets, eating out of dumpsters, sleeping in dangerous open spaces. His dad worries. His dad’s friends worry. But the world – it is a place of rocks, thrashing waves and strange creatures.

So far, he has found his way back to his dad’s house. Sometimes that’s after a few nights in jail, just for being Max. No charges, no crimes, just a scary dude who roars and is a bit dirty and smelly. He’s a wild thing right here in our midst. And, one thing that Carol says, in James Gandolfini’s inimitable voice, comes back to haunt me as I ponder this: “the island is shrinking … its going from forests to rocks to sand then to dust… I don’t know what comes after dust.”

As Max’s dad gets older, and so does Max, I think to myself the island is shrinking.