Labyrinth
It’s probably not surprising that I was much more a “Dark Crystal” person growing up than a “Labyrinth” person. I don’t think I even saw “Labyrinth” in its entirety until college when I started to get caught up with some of Jennifer Connelly’s work around the time “Dark City” came out. I’ve sometimes found that, if you don’t watch certain movies until you’re older, they don’t really connect with you, and “Labyrinth” was that way with me then. Now, I’m still more about the dark fantasy of “The Dark Crystal,” but “Labyrinth” has some great value as a lifelong Jim Henson fan.
“The Muppets” and “Fraggle Rock” were a big part of my childhood. When Henson died in 1990, I had grown out of them to an extent, but the loss was still felt. Over the past couple of years, “The Dark Crystal” has reasserted itself for me as a fan of his. Recently, my wife and some friends of ours just finished watching “Farscape,” which features remarkable puppetry and makeup work from the Jim Henson Creature Shop. Experiencing that series for the first time, I think Henson would be proud to have his company associated with such a compelling world, and the creatures contained within it. Some of the creature designs in that series feel like an evolution of “Labyrinth” and “The Dark Crystal,” even though those features are more fantasy than science fiction.
As with “The Dark Crystal,” “Labyrinth” is a narrative that is fairly straight-forward, but allows for visual imagination, and performer flexibility in terms of the sequences involving creatures interacting with Sarah, Connelly’s character. We first see her acting out scenes from a fantasy novel she’s infatuated with, The Labyrinth. It begins to rain when she runs home- she has to watch her baby brother, Toby, while her father and stepmother go out for the evening. Sarah is sick of watching Toby, but she doesn’t have much else to do on this stormy night. Toby is crying, and when Sarah goes to check on him, she wishes the Goblin King of her story would come and take him. To her surprise, that’s exactly what happens. Now, she has 13 hours to get through his treacherous labyrinth before Toby becomes a goblin.
The Goblin King is probably the most iconic David Bowie performance on film, but there’s not really much to the role. The character exists to provide Bowie an opportunity to be seductive, wickedly funny, and sing some quintessentially ’80s pop songs. It’s a good showcase for his charisma as a performer, and you can tell during “Magic Dance” he’s having the time of his life performing with these wild creatures. The music in this film is second to the creatures as what sells this film- I’m personally not as high on the lighter tone of this film, so the soundtrack doesn’t completely work for me, but Bowie’s songs and Trevor Jones’s score work in perfect harmony together. I can see why a lot of people in my age range have affection for this.
After “The Dark Crystal” got darker than he expected, Henson wanted to keep things a bit lighter on “Labyrinth.” To help with that, he enlisted Monty Python’s Terry Jones to write the screenplay. You can definitely feel the Python influence on the tone of “Labyrinth,” but when Sarah is trying to find her way through the labyrinth, that influence feels at odds with the hopelessness we should feel for Sarah on her journey. Having her meet up with colorful characters like Ludo and Hoggle is fine, but as he showed with his collaborators in “The Dark Crystal,” you can have fun and be serious at the same time. This time out, he is mixing Where the Wild Things Are with “The Wizard of Oz,” but this leans more on a tone befitting his beloved Muppets than a young girl just trying to find her way home, with a loved one in danger.
I may not like it as much as others, but it’s a shame that this film was a hit to give Henson more opportunities to experiment before he died. Who knows how much more we could have gotten from him in such a short time, but it’s hard not to feel like we collectively robbed ourselves of more magic from one of the great artists of our time. That makes what we did get all the more special.
