What I learned from "Labyrinth"...

So, this week I turned thirty three. My sister J and her girlfriend won the contest for best card with this photoshopped offering. Fantastic. 

Me and the Goblin King

I watched Labyrinth for the first time at the cinema in 1986. I was eight. I promptly commandeered a billowy white shirt, a waistcoat and ran around my back garden writing on walls in pink lipstick. This went on for some years. I was smitten. Laybrinth is one of those movies that has stuck with me into my adult years. I still get goosebumps when I hear the first bars of the music as the film starts. The ballroom scene remains one of the most oddly romantic things I have ever seen. I’ve shared knowing looks with colleagues and friends over the years as we share our mutual appreciation. For my sisters and I, it’s a seminal part of our childhoods. 

It's further than you think

If you haven’t seen this film (shame), this isn’t a review and will contain spoilers. Labyrinth is the story of a young teenage girl (a fourteen year old Jennifer Connelly in her film debut) wrapped up in a world of fantasy and childish possessions who unwittingly gives her baby brother to Jareth, the Goblin King (David Bowie). To get Toby back she has to solve Jareth’s Labyrinth and find the way to his castle. What ensues is pure fantasy and joy, made perfect by the the creations of genius puppeteer, Jim Henson. 

Things aren't always what they seem in this place

So I have been thinking about this film a lot this week, and wondering what it is that makes it so special. Sure the effects were okay, the puppets were cute, Jennifer Connelly was beautiful and then there is David Bowie’s trousers. Essays have been written online about the symbolism, the hidden meaning, the coming-of-age story behind the film (and the trousers) and I won’t repeat them. What I want to explore is why this film means so much to me. Self indulgent, maybe. But it’s my birthday. 

This is what I learned from Labyrinth: 

Life isn’t always fair.

Sarah’s journey sees her morph from petulant teenager to capable woman. In the first scene as she runs home in the rainstorm she cries “It’s not fair” and she says it often enough for Jareth to later chide her: “You say that so often. I wonder what your basis for comparison is”. When Hoggle makes the same complaint when she steals his jewels to elicit his help, she realises that indeed, life isn’t fair “and that’s just the way it is”. 

Don’t say it if you don’t mean it

“I wish the goblins would come and take you away” says Sarah as she closes the door on her crying brother. It is a matter of minutes before she regrets this and learns her first lesson. “I didn’t mean it” she pleads with Jareth but it is too late. It is when Sarah finally realises the weight and importance of the words from her book that she defeats Jareth with that elusive line, “You have no power over me”. Sarah has realised the danger of speaking without thinking first and more importantly the power of her own words. 

We all have to accept our responsibilities

The start of the film sees Sarah locked in her own indulgent fantasies and losing track of time. She is late getting home where she is supposed to be looking after her baby brother, Toby. Her railing against the “wicked stepmother” manifests in the story she tells to poor, grizzling Toby: “this girl was practically a slave”. 

When Toby is taken, Sarah realises that it is her responsibility and her’s alone to get him back. The Labyrinth is daunting but she realises that she must press on. Her final acceptance of her role as protector of Toby comes when she takes the final leap in the Escher style room at the end. 

Things aren’t always what they seem.

The Labyrinth looks impenetrable and impossible. It isn’t, there are hidden doors. Ludo looks like a vicious monster. He isn’t, he is a sweet and loyal friend. Jareth’s monstrous machines like the Cleaner and the guard at the castle, look powerful and unstoppable. In fact they are run by cowardly goblins. When Sarah escaped from Jareth’s ballroom fantasy, she falls into what looks like her room. It isn’t, it’s a trap to entice her to stay where it is comfortable and familiar. 

The lesson? What looks impossible isn’t always. What looks frightening, sometimes isn’t that bad. What looks familiar and safe isn’t always. Which leads me on to my next Labyrinth lesson. 

Should you need us

Trust in yourself

In his first scene Jareth taunts Sarah saying, “You’re no match for me” and rather than challenge this she pleads for her brother’s return. By the end, Sarah is a changed girl and faces down he Goblin King with a new found confidence. He backs away from her nd she is unhesitating. Throughout her journey Sarah starts to trust her instincts, from solving the puzzles along the way, to trusting in her new friends. She knows at the end that she must face Jareth alone and she is not afraid. She trusts in herself.  

Don’t expect Prince Charming to make it all better

Okay, so Jareth is an odd “Prince Charming” (although, those trousers....) but in Sarah’s fantasy the Goblin King is in love with her and he is the one that takes the cursed baby away and frees her from the slavery of babysitting. Sharp eyed viewers will have seen a man who looks suspiciously like Bowie in the photograph of her mother on Sarah’s dresser. Jareth is born of Sarah’s childish romantic fantasies.

Of course, Jareth proves that he is not the hero Sarah wants from the start, but one of my favourite scenes is the showdown between Sarah and Jareth when she faces him alone having fought her way to the castle. In a last attempt to persuade her to give up her quest, Jareth offers Sarah her “dreams”. Sarah has already seen some of what Jareth has to offer and rejects him and as the glass ball representing Sarah’s dreams is thrown into the air by a defeated Jareth, it becomes a bubble and bursts. What he was offering wasn’t real at all. 

I can never remember that line...

There is a time to put away childish things.

When Sarah returns to her home with baby Toby she gently tucks her beloved bear into his crib and then starts to slowly pack her things away into drawers,. Again, sharp eyed viewers have spotted that all the elements from the Labyrinth in Sarah’s bedroom. She  essentially locking away the remnants of her childhood fantasies. She is letting go of the fantasy of the Labyrinth and accepting that she is growing up.  

Keep a place for childish things...

Okay, bit of a contradiction but hey, life is full of those. Just because you can’t stop the passage of time, doesn’t mean that you can’t and shouldn’t keep a little place for your childish dreams (like a much loved film...). Sarah tells her friends that “sometimes, for whatever reason in my life, I will need you, all of you.” 

Those trousers...

Of course, my sister J will say that the real lesson to be learned from Labyrinth is when a tight trousered Goblin King offers you your dreams in return for a screaming baby - you say yes! She still maintains that our baby sister would have been a fair trade. Hey, she would have enjoyed being a goblin. And “it’s only forever, not long at all.”