Labyrinth (1986) is a modern fairy tale with a teen girl fallen in a world of the Goblin King to save her young brother! The fantasy film directed by Jim Henson. It stars Jennifer Connelly as the teenaged girl Sarah and David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King. This film has complexity, past the Alice in Wonderland wandering in an absurd world, I see it as the struggle of a teenage girl entering an adult world, confusing, compelling in the figure of David Bowie’s Jareth. She has to learn to grow up on her own, not rush into the adult world, and how to listen to her own voice. Bowie’s “Underground” plays as the film opens to a CGI barn owl flying through the black reflected in the darkness.
It flies to resolve to a real barn owl landing and watching Sarah walking up in a park next to a lake. We later see that the owl is one of the shapeshifting forms that Jareth takes as a trickster figure. Sarah is practicing her lines from her red fairy tale book, The Labyrinth, to free the Stolen Child from the Goblin King. This touches on the poem by William Butler Yeats and “Erlkonig” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe set to music by Franz Schubert. It starts to rain and Sarah runs back with her sheep dog, Merlin, to home. We later get another sheep dog as the mount to Sir Didymus, Ambrosius, said to be one of the names for Merlin. There she sees her stepmother (Shelley Thompson) who is about to go on a dinner date with Sarah’s father (Christopher Malcolm).
It is seen in a newspaper in Sarah’s room that her mother died in car accident. Her stepmother wants her to watch over Toby (played by Toby Froud, now a young man). The glimpse in her room has Where the Wild Things Are, a doll in a white dress (which prefigures herself in the ballroom scene), and an Escher painting. She panics when her Lancelot bear is missing and she finds it on the floor of Toby’s crib. Angrily, she wishes for the Goblin King to take him, this to the mirror, very Lewis Carroll, and the goblins wait for her to say the correct words. She does so and the power goes out, goblins scamper around the room, finally the owl bursts through the door, and Jareth appears!
He shows her the Labyrinth and gives her 13 hours to solve it or Toby will become a goblin. Sarah heads off to the Labyrinth and immediately finds the Dwarf Hoggle (played by Shari Weiser) with voice by Brian Henson, having a tinkle into a pool. The running joke is pronouncing his name which Sarah at first calls him “Hogwart.” He is busy spraying fairies, this shocks Sarah who picks one up, and she is bitten. Hoggle says of course they are Biting Fairies. This gives the idea that the Labyrinth brings up expectations and twists them. Hoggle opens the Labyrinth for Sarah and he leaves her. Sarah is lost trying to run down an endless passage and frustrated rests against a wall. There she hears the Worm (voiced by Timothy Bateson) who tells her to walk straight toward the other wall which she finds is an optical illusion.
Then, he tells her not to walk the left passage, she turns the other way, since the left passage would lead directly to the castle! his is what Sarah learns is not only ask questions, but to ask the right ones and navigate a bureaucratic world. The adult world can be confusing with its own rules that sometimes contradict themselves! She is trapped in a dark room, the Oubliette, and Jareth worries that Sarah has gotten far in his Labyrinth. The interaction of Bowie and the Goblins is brilliant. Hoggle frees Sarah after getting a plastic bracelet from her. They go up a stair, Hoggle calls himself a “coward”, emerging from a vase in the Labyrinth. Hoggle goes off on his own when there is a roar, Sarah conquers her fear to check on the beast held captive by goblins torturing it with Nipper Sticks, strange, fanged creatures on a stick.
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| Sarah and Jareth's costumes at the Jim Henson Exhibition, Skirball Center, photo by the author. |
She finds rocks summoned by the beast’s call to throw at the goblin helmets. The goblins get confused using the sticks to bite each other’s behinds and call a retreat. Sarah frees the captured creature, he is a massive, hairy Beast, almost orangutan with horns and a tail. He calls himself Ludo (performed by Ron Mueck and Rob Mills) and becomes Sarah’s loyal friend. This helping cycle is like the Cowardly Lion. Sarah and her companions have to negotiate the two-bodied Knockers (like a playing card), the rock-like Helping Hands that are cleverly formed into talking shapes that can guide her through a pit, the Firies (horrible Fraggle Rock-like creatures that can detach their body parts), and end up in the Bog of Eternal Stench.
They encounter Sir Didymus (performed by Dave Goelz and David Barclay), a Fox Terrier knight who is relentless guarding the bridge, and apparently can’t smell the bog. Sarah has to work out that his vow and simply asks his permission to cross. Sir Didymus joins the quest. Sarah is betrayed by Hoggle’s peach given by Jareth and ends up in a masquerade of adults. Sarah escapes to land in a junkyard of forgotten things. The Junk Lady tries to tempt her with missing toys, but her companions break through the wall of her room. There is Humongous, a massive guardian made out of the gate, that they have to get past. Sarah and her friends enter the Goblin City and get into a madcap battle which ends with Ludo’s calling of the rocks. Sarah confronts Jareth who reveals to her the Escher steps of his castle where Toby crawls in every direction.
The Goblin King tries to tempt her saying that he will do everything for her, she only has to be his slave. Sarah finally remembers the last line she keeps forgetting that Jareth has no power over her, this is dynamic of males only having power if it is given to them. Sarah has freed Toby, returns back to her house sending off Jareth as an owl, and finds her friends in a mirror there when she needs them. This is a powerful film that has brilliant songs by David Bowie, funny creations from the Jim Henson Creature Shop, and fantastic effects. When Sarah says of the Labyrinth, “It’s not fair!”, this is because the rules of adulthood are not laid out to young people. Sarah learns not keep the bobbles from her childhood from the Junk Lady, but to embrace her friends and family (which includes Toby), while entering the confusing, adult world.
Five Peaches out of Five!
#TheLabyrinth, #Jim Henson, #DavidBowie, #JenniferConnelly
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