I sat down this morning to watch Lance Bangs and Spike Jonze’s “Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak,” which originally aired on HBO last night, expecting little more than a swift, arbitrary look at the author and perhaps a nice companion piece to Jonze’s adaptation of “Where the Wild Things Are.” Boy was I in for a surprise.
The film (which is on Oscar’s short list for documentary shorts) is instantly one of the 2009’s great joys, a compelling, insightful study from the perspective of the genuine article. And Sendak is indeed the genuine article, a directly honest man who has transformed his take on the world into profound art for most of his 81 years. And at that healthy old age, he seems equally awed by, and bored with, the realities of the world.
Filming began in 2003 at Sendak’s home in Connecticut. The seasons zip back and forth, spring sunshine to winter snowdrift, as Bangs and Jonze piece together the meat of Jonze’s conversations with the author. The title stems from Sendak’s opinion that there should be no demarcation when it comes to age. “I don’t believe in childhood,” he says. “Like, ‘You mustn’t tell them that,’ ‘You mustn’t tell them that.’ You tell them anything you want…If it’s true, you tell them.”