I Digress, but Happily

Watch this first: http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/wherethewildthingsare/.

Usually, I resist a movie made from a book – particularly a children’s book – because by god, don’t people believe in reading anymore?! (Particularly a children’s book that – judging by preview alone – takes such grand liberties with the original written material. All 10 sentences of it.) That said, I have watched the trailer for Where The Wild Things Are no less than 10 times (once for each sentence!), and every time I cry.

WHY? Because this is a movie made by grown-ups about being a child, and these grown-ups capture that child-like-ness in ways that adults ordinarily leave far, far behind.

First, watching this, I feel – finally! again! – that life can as easily bring terror as joy. And I also feel an endless capacity to keep coming back for more – for the terror and the joy. These images, this music, brings me back to that moment of promise when I believed there was as much chance for hope as hurt in the world. As we grow older, I think we – in self-defense – trick ourselves into believing that hurt trumps hope “in the real world,” when really, we’re just less willing to risk the hurt for the hope. They go hand-in-hand these two experiences, and they are both still here in abundance – an endless cycle of feathered hope and wingless disappointment.

Second, as children, we know that what we want our life to be exists – with equal validity – side-by-side with what our life actually is. There is no disconnect between dreams and reality. What’s wrong with all the grown-ups? As an adult, I am endlessly wounded by what I perceive as the gaping distance between what is and what should be. To be a child is to exist in those two worlds at once, without feeling tortured by the fact that the seams don’t always line up. Is that naiveté? Or is it a sophisticated ability to inhabit a world of dueling dualities?

I come back to this trailer over and over and over again, right now. Why is this so powerful? Why am I so moved?

I need (don’t we all need?) to be reminded that the world is still full of promise. That we are still full of promise. We are young and full of wonder. Believe in monsters.