#1: Labyrinth (1986)
directed by Jim Henson
written by Terry Jones
starring Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie
January 2017; London, UK. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are in town to talk with Graham Norton about their latest film, a little musical called La La Land. Conversation drifts to their first collaboration, during Crazy, Stupid, Love; they recall a moment from filming when Gosling tried to lift Stone up in the air, and ended up triggering childhood traumas within his co-star. “You had to crawl into bed and watch Labyrinth,” notes Gosling with some bemusement; Stone proceeds to detail how the horrified cast and crew came in to check on her while she blubbered about Jennifer Connelly’s masterful performance.
I have no idea how prevalent this phenomenon is, but Labyrinth seems to have been something of a foundational experience for quite a few 90s and 00s kids. Loads of people have talked of being inspired by Jim Henson’s magical fantasy, or getting into David Bowie based on this one film; certainly it’s not hard to see why, with its outlandish fairytale settings and its ugly yet charming monsters. (Presumably, they would also be heartened in their discovery that much of Bowie’s discography is better than “Magic Dance”.)
But watching it for the first time as a 25-year-old, I was struck by how fundamentally adult everything in it was. The monsters, for instance, aren’t cute cuddly creatures that might be turned into marketable plushies; if the face of Hoggle or Ludo were to loom in your dreams, chances are you would immediately wake up screaming. Same goes for the punishment for Sarah’s failure: the horror and revulsion one feels at the idea of this pubescent girl being forced to marry the fully adult Jareth only grows with age. (And on top of all this, there is the matter of David Bowie’s embiggened crotch — perhaps his discography wasn’t the only thing that awakened interest.) Despite the “G” rating, this is not really a movie for children; its real intended audience, like its protagonist, are more mature humans on the cusp of (or even way into) adulthood: those who might be ready to grow up, but aren’t really ready to leave their juvenile fantasies behind either.
Having Jim Henson at the helm makes Labyrinth even more of a curious study. Henson is of course best known these days for originating things like Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, but he had never been a children’s-only entertainer: his Muppets had been a mainstay of Saturday Night Live during its first season, and his infamous 1982 film The Dark Crystal had frightened the bejeezus out of many a child. Even The Muppet Show, designed with a children’s audience in mind, had many a dark moment: Fozzie and Kermit would have the occasional onstage breakdown, and I’ve never been able to forget that infamous clip of Peter Sellers, asked by a visibly unnerved Kermit to relax and be himself, muttering in response “there is no me… I do not exist”. It’s not a far stretch to imagine Labyrinth as a work of the same vein: one could easily see Hoggle, Jareth and Toby as stand-ins for betrayal, sexual trauma and bereavement.
But the idea that the best children’s entertainment always contains adult themes is already well-trodden. Instead, what I find most interesting is not so much the content of this film, but rather the way it is presented. I say this because Labyrinth is a disjointed movie: barely five minutes pass by before Sarah finds herself in yet another place, facing yet another brand-new challenge or temptation. Corners of the labyrinth blur into one another; side characters appear and disappear from the movie on a whim. In this aspect it feels a lot like how a child might just see the world: as children our attention jumps from place to place, easily distracted by another attraction around us; we shun any attempt at reflection in favour of more action and adventure, unable to countenance the idea of anything boring.
I have to wonder if this stream-of-consciousness writing was a callback to the writer’s previous work. Like Labyrinth, Monty Python’s Flying Circus jumps from idea to idea, ending sketches whenever they seemed to be running into a dead-end and drifting into a surreal fantasy world where anything could happen (Hoggle and Sir Didymus all seem like they could have come straight out of the pen of Terry Gilliam). And like Labyrinth, the world of Monty Python was always much more morbid than it appeared — gratuitous violence, or a couple of Nazis in uniform, could suddenly burst out of nowhere. Nothing was (or more accurately, felt like it was) off-limits — which is another feature, as it happens, of the way children see the world.
Two surreal worlds: one mind-bending, unknowable, populated by scary monsters; the other suburban, recognisable, kooky but completely human… and yet the more you think about it, the more they seem to fit. Could Sarah Williams turn the corner, and find herself faced with a silly-walking John Cleese? Might Michael Palin and his dead parrot suddenly fall into a Bog of Eternal Stench? Despite the difference in theme, the worlds of Terry Jones aren’t that dissimilar from each other: made of the exact same mind-bending foundations, they only differ in their inhabitants’ appearances. Everything else — the way everyone talks, the (lack of) logic with which they operate — is interchangeable; both situate childish flights of fancy within a scary, adult world. (Though see Movie #81 for the other side of the coin…)
And let’s be honest, the world does feel a lot like that, even after we’ve grown up and become more equipped to deal with this obstacle course we call life. As children we are afraid of monsters hiding in the closet and magic up imaginary friends to deal with our loneliness; as adults we worry about neo-fascists hiding in plain sight and magic up scenes from our bygone youth to soothe our troubled minds. We are told by the Good Book that when we become adults, we put away childish things; yet rare is the person who manages to be “completely grown-up”. Towards the end of Labyrinth, we see Sarah alone in her room, getting some peace and quiet after everything that’s happened. Yet something feels off; after everything that’s just happened, it feels eerily quiet. As she turns to the mirror, we see the creatures of Jareth’s labyrinth in the reflection, and Sarah finds herself saying “I don’t know why, but every now and again in my life, for no reason at all, I need you. All of you.” Then Hoggle gives a roar of triumph, and suddenly they are all tangible again, all crowded into her little room in the suburbs.
I like that phrase — “for no reason at all”. For such is the porous line between adult and child, such is the fractured nature of our reality, that all it takes to cross the boundary between the two worlds is one simple, unplanned turn of thought (and the camera). As Emma Stone exemplifies, it takes very little for grown-ups to turn back into children; or perhaps it is more accurate to say that the childish urge never really goes away within us, easily summoned at the turn of a dime. Jareth’s labyrinth, as well as Labyrinth itself, is situated right in the middle of that liminal space, where adulthood meets childhood, where one world feels just as “real” as the other — and just as significant, too.
Perhaps this is the secret to Labyrinth’s undying appeal: in a world where it seems like the delineation between adult and child can be very thin, it’s there to help us cross the line, to turn all our shadowy adult fears into tangible childish monsters. Those monsters never really went away, you see, but in its version of the world — the spitting image of ours — they can be defined, made real, and even dealt with. Who doesn’t watch that climatic scene, and wish they too could say “you have no power over me”? Even though our own world could never be that simple, with all its contradictions and complexities, it still feels somewhat calming for a film to see all those fears we have, to give them a name, give them a form… and even to insinuate that they can be vanquished. Because if it’s doable in this world, it seems to say, then maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to vanquish them in yours as well? After all, at the end of the day, they’re all the same monsters.
Next time: “No, Mr Bond, I expect you to be a more decent person.”
Inkpot Shuffles in the Twilight 