Celebrating 35 Years of Jim Henson’s ‘Labyrinth’

Labyrinth (1986)
Tri-Star Pictures
“Come inside and meet the missus…”

It has been 35 years since the release of Labyrinth, Jim Henson’s 1986 classic tale of a girl called Sarah who sets out on an adventure to rescue her baby half-brother, Toby, from goblins and, gods, I feel ancient. Over here, in the Old World (okay, England…), the film was released in December 1986, and I have vague recollections of a school trip to the cinema to see it. Not that much attention was paid to what was going on on-screen, in a class of 25-to-30 other 8-to-9 year olds with not enough adult supervision to keep everyone quiet. The similarities of us, then, to the goblins in the movie are hitting me like a truck, now I come to think about it. I’m sure the teachers present saw them immediately.

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Anyway, fast-forward to a year, maybe two, after that incident. We were no longer banned from the cinema by now, but the VHS release of Labyrinth was firmly in the video rental shops and the movie sunk in much deeper. I was more aware of its connection to The Dark Crystal, another film I loved, by this point. Mainly via Henson, but I was also made aware of the art of Brian Froud by my very design-aware eldest brother. Froud was a concept artist on both The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth (along with Henson’s The Storyteller TV series, which came later) and designs of his from these movies can be seen, some developed further, in his many published books. So, I began to take much more notice and at that age, and connected with the basic ‘hero’s journey’ story at face value:

Girl, annoyed by parents, kind-of-accidentally-on-purpose gets her half-brother kidnapped by goblins and has to rescue him. She goes on an adventure, makes friends, beats the baddies, saves her half-brother before her parents get home, and has a number of song and dance routines in the mix as a bonus!

The basic premise is good enough to carry Labyrinth for many years, as it very much has done, but with more viewing, and with more maturity, more is noticed that can be dissected.

“Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave…”

When looking back from our lofty grey tower of the present over the dim, yet colourful, patchwork landscape of history, it’s hard to imagine that Labyrinth was a flop at the cinema, but a flop it was. From a $25 million budget, it recouped only around $13 million from the US box office. It was the last movie Jim Henson was to direct but at least, according to his son Brian Henson, he was aware of Labyrinth’s growing cult status before he passed away in May 1990.

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Terry Jones, of Monty Python fame, was called in to write the first treatment of the script, but by the time the film was released, that treatment had been through many hands, including George Lucas and even David Bowie. Christopher Malcolm played Sarah and Toby’s Father. His first big role was playing Brad Majors in the original stage production of The Rocky Horror Show, but the eagle-eyed amongst us will also recognise him as the Rebel pilot who finds Luke Skywalker on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. Shelley Thompson, Sarah’s stepmother and mother to baby Toby, has gone on to play Barbara Lahey, the owner of the trailer park in Trailer Park Boys. David Bowie, who needs no introduction, played Jareth the Goblin King, along with another role I’ll discuss below.

Jennifer Connelly had secured a few other parts before starring in Labyrinth, but Sarah was her breakout role. Since then, she has worked consistently in films such as The Rocketeer, Dark City and Requiem for a Dream, but 2012 saw the highlight of her career, nay life, when she finally met me whilst I was on a 6-week shoot working with her husband, Paul Bettany (you’ve probably never heard of him but he’s pretty good, too). Did I mention to her having been a fan for years, or how big a part of my life Labyrinth had been? Nope, not a chance. I was being professional and we just engaged in small talk. Yes, I wish I’d said something. Ah, well. And, yes, Gates McFadden, of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame, did choreograph the movie under the name Cheryl McFadden.

“Your mother is an aardvark!”

Back to the story itself. On the surface, it can be viewed as just a fantasy tale of a girl rescuing her half-brother from goblins. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that at all, but scratch that surface and there may be more at play. For a start, all the elements from the world of the labyrinth are there in Sarah’s bedroom, which we see thanks to a pan across the room early in the film. Toys become the inhabitants of the labyrinth. The music box forms the basis for the ballroom party late in the film. There is the Escher poster on the wall, and the labyrinth game itself. A statue of Jareth the Goblin King stands next to Sarah’s mirror, and books with elements of the main story are maybe/definitely cherry-picked from like The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Snow White, and Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are and Outside Over There.

Something else that even I’d missed until fairly recently in this camera pan across a teenage girl’s bedroom are the newspaper clippings relating to Sarah’s real mother. It turns out she’s a fairly famous actress who has had an on/off affair with one of her male co-stars, who just happens to also be played by David Bowie. As far as the film is concerned, we learn nothing more about this, but more of their story is revealed in the novelisation by A.C.H. Smith, which goes into more detail of Sarah’s relationship with her real mum and the man her mum is in a relationship with, Jeremy.

Sarah is fond of Jeremy and enjoys spending time with him and her mother. So, why is Sarah now with her father and stepmom? Well, her mom and Jeremy lead extravagant lifestyles so maybe there’s just no room for Sarah. That may be why she acts like a brat at the start of the film – she’s stuck where she doesn’t want to be; with her dad, stepmother, and screaming half-brother in a run-of-the-mill existence where her main escape is her imagination.

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She continues through the film making various mistakes — not keeping track of time, going one way when she should go another, picking the wrong guard in a truth/lie game that, even now, still doesn’t make much sense to me, going down when she should go up etc. However, with the help of some very non-traditional heroes who she meets along the way (a la Wizard of Oz…) in the guise of Hoggle, the ugly dwarf who we first encounter peeing in a pool and killing fairies (watch out: they bite!), the rock-controlling monster Ludo and knightly fox-beast Sir Didymus, Sarah grows fast through learning from her mistakes, and knowing when to ask for help.

Seemingly impossible solutions to the various problems the labyrinth throws at Sarah positively ooze with magic, or madness akin to the tales it borrows from – the Alice stories in particular. We’re talking doors that just appear in walls or climbing up a ladder and appearing out from an ornamental vase. The geography doesn’t make sense when viewed logically. It’s the stuff of dreams/imaginations. And why does Jareth look like Sarah’s mother’s lover? Is it because Sarah views him as being the one who took her Mom away so, therefore, is her ultimate antagonist or, on the flipside, is it a real goblin king taking on a form it knows Sarah is fond of? Are the Fae really here, back to their old tricks of stealing babies and tricking humans, or is it all a dream?

“She treats me like a wicked stepmother in a fairy story no matter what I say…”

I believe it’s a game. It’s all in Sarah’s imagination. The typical transition tropes don’t appear here – Sarah doesn’t fall asleep and end up in Jareth’s world, nor does she suddenly wake up and realise it was all a dream. The crossover from one world to the next is seamless. At the start of the film, we see Sarah enacting a scene from a play. We’re external to her imagination and see her ‘acting’ in a park, forgetting her lines, realising she’s late and has to get home. Then, as the film moves on, we view the world from within her imagination and see the entire game she’s creating and playing through. However, as she grows, she breaks a childish, petulant, cycle she got stuck in and takes a step away from childhood – she gives her bear, Lancelot, to her baby half-brother. She begins to pack away her toys, including taking down the clippings of her Mother and Jeremy, and she begins to move on. As those same characters from her imagination say goodbye, but remind her that they’ll always be there should she need them, Sarah admits, “I don’t know why, but every now and then in my life, for no reason at all, I need you…”

And then they all have another song and dance.

OR… it’s all real and Jareth the Goblin King really does steal babies, or perhaps he was just testing Sarah to see if she’d grow up, or he has fallen in love with the mortal Sarah and has just drifted off to bide his time/lick his wounds. (I’m not getting into the comics right now, before anyone asks…)

Take it however you wish. It is a story that can be seen at various levels, depending on your energy and willingness to be open to ideas. Is it perfect? No, but it’s full of charm, character, and love; typical of anything from Jim Henson. And I managed to just talk about it for over 1600 words without once mentioning Jareth’s codpiece.


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