This is a delightful movie. It is the quintessential quest narrative--Alice in Wonderful only, surprisingly, less disturbing. The problem is presented almost immediately (unlike, as Mike points out, the problem in the slow-moving E.T.). The teenage heroine crosses the threshold into the fairy king's world (I know Jareth is technically the King of the Goblins, but he meets all the requirements for the fairy king, being random, untamed, and having wild hair--see Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell). Sarah's complaints, which start the quest, are eye-rollingly extreme and totally normal for her age.
After crossing the threshold, Sarah proceeds to collect followers/mentors and undergo trials. And through it all she is clever and resourceful and even amusing (I remembered the line "C'mon feet!" from my teen years).
And threaded through it all is the mysterious, handsome, extraordinarily British, and downright amusing Jareth. ("Well," he says with irritation to his goblin companions: "Laugh!") I love his Regency English clothes which are surprisingly not as dated as one would think since although we've left the punk 80's behind, Regency England is totally here to stay.
Plus he has many of the film's best lines. This exchange between him and Sarah appears to be a precursor to Princess Bride:
Sarah: That's not fair.Back to the quest motif, there is a final confrontation, and the heroine returns a changed person. The message (what the heroine has learned) is a little heavy-handed but clever and effective since it is mostly visual.
Jareth: You say that so often. I wonder what your basis of comparison is.
Inigo from The Princess Bride: I do not think that word means what you think it means.
The movie is just gosh-darn-cute. I love Hoggle spraying the flower fairies, the "False Alarms," Sir Didymus (who reminds me of Reepicheep). I love the classic fantasy motifs: animal helpers; fairy food that causes forgetfulness/sleep; riddles; things that are bigger inside than they look outside . . .
The crew seems to have really cared about giving the movie visual and auditory ambiance. There's one arial shot where we see Hobble and Sarah in the labyrinth. As they pass a hedge, a funny-looking knight gallops past. They never meet up with the knight. He was just thrown in for fun. That is very cool.
Interesting enough, out of all the movies we've watched for this list so far, Labyrinth is one of the most likely to be reviewed/mentioned by one of my wasn't-born-at-the-time Freshmen students when I do literary review essays. (It is usually brought up by young women.) Step aside Edward. David Bowie so got there first.
Mike says "Smack that Baby, make him pee!"
I LOVED this film as a kid. And as a teenager. And as a young adult in college. And I realize, watching it now, that I STILL love it. It's wonderfully wacky, slightly irreverent, and unrelentingly imaginative. But, upon watching it and seeing some of the downright creepy and disturbing imagery featured in some scenes, I wonder how in the world I wasn't scared out of my mind!
The movie begins quickly with little set up and explanation, but enough to get the point across. Within fifteen minutes, Sarah is running through the labyrinth! The funny thing is just how coherent all of this is, despite no introduction or background for Jareth (Bowie's character) or on his relationship with Sarah.
The film has the pacing, structure and randomness of a dream (which the film may or may not be!), but without too much of that meta-physical stream of consciousness art film stuff, and it still manages to be very easy to follow. The world, the villain, even the plot is so easy to accept, despite not much explanation for any of it, that it almost defies logic.
Part of the magic has to be the actors themselves. By creating such a feeling of familiarity with the world, and each other, they implied a larger back story that made everything work. The film really does function like the second film in a franchise, yet everything is still so clear... well, except for the trippy ballroom scene; what the hell was THAT about!?!?!
As a kid, and even now, I find something incredibly refreshing and even a little scandalous about the subtle naughtiness of the film (which, upon educated reflection, reveals the British nature of the production). The occasional rude remarks, potty jokes, and the absurdly serious comical characters (all trademarks of British humor) are all just a little rare in the fantasy genre, especially then! Not only does the film seem to fit in with the like of The Princess Bride, but it might also compare currently to Shrek.
Labyrinth is a wonderfully odd and fun film that seems to grow with its audience. Cute and fun companions of childhood become slightly terrifying symbols in adulthood. Bowie, years from the height of his popularity, still sells a convincingly deep and evocative villain (extraordinary because of the sheer lack of any real character development in the script).
Despite all this, one has to wonder just how many nightmares that toddler had from hanging out in a room of scary goblin puppets for hours on end repeatedly over the course of several days.
No comments:
Post a Comment