The Mental Labyrinth

On the surface, it is not hard to see why a film like Labyrinth has developed such a huge following. At first glance, it appears to simply be nothing more than a surreal (if very campy) fantasy adventure with a variety of bizarre and humorous characters designed by Jim Henson. As ridiculous as the film's story might be, one cannot deny the imagination that has gone into its narrative both in terms of the world depicted and those who inhabit it. This creativity is more or less the main draw of the film. The actual story is very simplistic, and is more or less taken straight from The Wizard of Oz: a teenage girl gets transported to a mystical world where she is joined by three strange companions on a quest to return home while a powerful magician pulls every trick at their disposal to stop her. One could argue that Sarah is a somewhat stronger character than Dorothy, but the parallels are undeniable.

However, while on the surface, this appears to be the basic narrative, the movie might just be more complex than one will initially realize. Far from a surreal adventure with strange Muppets (even for Jim Henson), it is actually a very detailed character study. Many aspects of the film become much more sense when one realizes that, much like The Wizard of Oz, most if not all of the central narrative actually happens in the mind of its heroine, played by Jennifer Connelly. What the audience experiences is not in fact a physical journey but a mental one. It is really a story about conflicting emotions, and her struggle to accept herself.

When Sarah is introduced, the film immediately begins by way of a strange sequence which sets up an important detail about her character. In this scene, Sarah appears in a suspiciously medieval-looking environment. She is in an open field near a stone bridge, wearing an old-fashioned dress while reading her book. At first glance, it appears that she is in a medieval fantasy world, creating a jarring affect when the next scene reveals a modern neighborhood. This contrast is also emphasized by the composition of both scenes. When she is at the bridge, it is bright and sunny with a strong use of high-key lighting, while low-key lighting is used for her running through the neighborhood in the rain. These touches allow a glimpse into Sarah's imagination.

The opening scene represents how she imagines herself, while the following sequence shows that image being shattered by reality. She tries to enter a fantasy world, but keeps getting pulled out of it by her real-world responsibilities. The only thing that she is able to cling to of the world she longs for is her soaked and antiquated looking dress, and even this is revealed to be nothing more than a costume. Once at home, Sarah removes a large portion of the dress, revealing underneath a pair of jeans and running shoes. This sets up the movie's prominent theme of fantasy and reality, and the conflict between childlike imagination and adult responsibility. The tension between these two extremes drives much of the film.

At the beginning, Sarah's imaginary world is shattered by her adult responsibilities. When she returns home, she finds out that she has to look after her baby brother Toby. While she does not appear to have any specific plans, Sarah is frustrated about being given responsibility without a choice in the matter. She feels as if Toby is taking over her personal life, represented when she enters her room filled with fantasy characters and costume accessories. She also upset when her teddy bear, fittingly named Lancelot, is found in Toby's room. Sarah finds Toby crying, and drawing on her imagination begins to taunt him, though less out of any intentional abuse and more her not thinking straight due to her frustration.

Eventually, Sarah unwittingly summons the goblins, including their King Jareth, played by the late David Bowie. It is the moment Sarah coldly says "I wish the goblins would come and take you away" that reality ends, and her mind takes over, drawing on her imaginary worlds. In addition to the title of the movie, Labyrinth is also the title of a book she is seen reading several times. It is presumably from this book that she draws her "story" that describes her feelings about having to babysit Toby, which includes a "goblin king." It therefore seems strange that a film until now grounded in reality should suddenly incorporate these fantastical elements with no logical explanation.

This makes more sense when one realizes that Jareth as a person does not actually exist in the world of the story, nor does the labyrinth. The conflict is not one between two people so much as between the protagonist and her own consciousness. Sarah's personality is broken up into two roles, and the movie is the tension and eventual reconciliation between these two sides of her personality. Sarah casts herself as the responsible and mature side, while the frustration and desire to get rid of Toby that she has displayed becomes personified in Jareth.

Immediately before he appears, Sarah steps out of the bedroom, pauses, and re-enters, presumably feeling guilty about her momentary outburst. It is fittingly timed that this is when Jareth makes his first appearance, as he represents this side of Sarah's personality. As he does not actually exist, he probably never abducted Toby, but he does act as Sarah's darker side. Upon taking the child, he opts to try to pursued Sarah to ignore her responsibilities, to go back to her room. Sarah refuses to accept this, but this other part of her mind is persistent. These two sides clash together, represented when she finds herself in the titular labyrinth.

The labyrinth is less a physical location than it is a mental state. This is why Sarah appears to simply teleport into the area outside its entrance, rather than any travel actually taking place. Jareth challenges Sarah to "solve the labyrinth" in order to retrieve her brother. The labyrinth, however, is symbolic of the tension between both sides of Sarah's own mind. At the moment, it is the irresponsible side, represented by Jareth, that remains in control. This is evidenced by the increasing obsession that he develops with Sarah. He never shows any real concern for his actual responsibilities as the supposed King of the Goblins, symbolizing his role as her irresponsible side.

This is shown by Sarah's initial struggles to begin navigating the maze. She has trouble even finding the door, and upon entering is easily motivated to give up whenever it gets too complicated. She breaks down upon entering the first passage. Later on, she tries to use lipstick to mark her routes, only to find someone has been moving the tiles she drew on. "It's not fair," she childishly yells several times throughout the first act. It is only as she metaphorically grows up that she makes any real progress. With her progression into the maze, her responsible side slowly becomes more powerful, while Jareth becomes weaker and increasingly desperate to maintain control.

 

The strange Muppet dwarf Hoggle also serves as a bridge between these two sides of Sarah's personality. Throughout the movie, he is constantly torn between serving both sides. On one side, there is the pressure brought on by the irresponsible side, and yet he also has a consciousness that tells him Sarah is trying to do the right thing (even if he refuses to admit it). Hoggle's good intentions but apparent cowardice symbolize Sarah's own feelings as she struggles through a difficult evening. He constantly tries to offer assistance to Sarah, while also being easily scared or pressured by Jareth into doing the wrong thing, yet whenever he gives in, he also must face the guilt of his actions; just as Sarah struggles with the immediate guilt of her own actions.

 

When Sarah first enters the labyrinth, Hoggle asks her a simple question: "would you go left or go right?" and when asked which way he would go simply replies "I wouldn't go either." Sarah immediately dismisses him as being useless, completely failing to understand the meaning of his advice. It sounds at first as though he is merely expressing his reluctance to go through the labyrinth, but he actually says he would not go "either way" because neither way is correct. At this point, Sarah is still overwhelmed by her guilt and frustration, and subsequently remains unable to see the actual passage forward.

 

As Sarah continues through the labyrinth, she displays an increasing strength in overcoming its obstacles even as Jareth throws various tricks at her. This is symbolized by the various strange challenges she faces in the labyrinth, during which she displays intelligence and resourcefulness that gets her into the oubliette, far enough to make Jareth worried that she might actually succeed. These changes occur as Sarah herself "grows up" and begins to take responsibility. The responsible side of her personality is now taking control, while Jareth grows weaker.

 

With these newfound resources, Sarah also develops two new allies in the form of gentle giant Ludo and a strange fox named Sir Didymus (whose "trusty steed" is a dog that looks very much like Sarah's own dog Merlin, a cue that this is still in her mind). Both of them are obtained through challenges that require Sarah to act responsibly. Ludo is first found tied up by goblins, and freed through an act of strength when Sarah manages to scare off his goblin captors. Didymus is won over when Sarah uses her intelligence to resolve a simple (if very petty) dispute. This development of a party, rather than Sarah alone, represents the growing power of her own mind.

 

 

Jareth is able to bring out one last trick against Sarah, which almost works, but it is ultimately a test of will. This occurs when she is tricked into eat a berry that eliminates her memories. Sarah finds herself in a strange garbage dump occupied by people who carry bundles of objects on their backs. This offers a possible opportunity for her irresponsible side to take over, to reject her adult responsibilities in favor of a childish obsession with toys. However, she also shows her strength when she manages to remind herself of her responsibility, refuses to lose control, and breaks free.

 

This in turn leads the party to the goblin city, where the guards prove ineffective against dealing with them. Eventually, they reach Jareth's castle, where Sarah insists on facing him alone. Her companions agree to this, and tell her to "call" them if she needs them. She claims that she must do this because "that is how it is done," but in fact it is far more complicated. Everything up to this point has been Sarah's own imagination, and the struggles of her personality. She has used her great strength, her imagination, to deal with an emotional period, but in the end she must face her fears directly.

 

The confrontation between the two central characters becomes separated from the rest of the world. Jareth and Sarah both find themselves on a floating platform where the confrontation happens, but more interesting is the way it plays out. Rather than any type of fight, Sarah uses her voice as a source of power. In doing so, Sarah is able to accept her responsibilities reject the urges represented by Jareth, who now remains unable to control her. This is explained through the passage Sarah refers to, which ends with the phrase "You have no power over me." It is her speaking this phrase that finally ends the fantasy and brings Sarah back into the real world.

 

 

A few hours have passed, and Sarah has calmed down. The labyrinth has been nothing more than her mix of feelings over the course of the evening. She willingly checks on Toby, even letting him keep her teddy bear, and still manages to find time for herself. However, at the end, she finds herself "missing" her friends from the labyrinth. This in turn suggests that she is not ready to give up her imaginary worlds, but she has also learned from her experiences. The ending, during which a party breaks out in her room with her companions as well as several of the strange figures encountered in the maze, represents a new realization. Childhood fantasies and adult responsibilities are not mutually exclusive. It is simply a matter of learning to balance both sides.

 

Underneath its campy production, strange characters, and imaginative landscapes, Labyrinth is really nothing more than a simple (if very unusual) coming of age story centered around the thought processes of a single protagonist. It's all about growing up and accepting responsibility, but in the end also being able to do so without leaving everything behind. The whole movie a single teenager's struggle to deal with a mix of emotions over the course of a single evening, but what makes this unusual is the decision to enter her mind and to explore her thought processes rather than to see it from the outside.

Models Are Not Always The Answer

One of the biggest complaints I hear regarding modern filmmaking is in regards to how common CGI has become, usually by saying that models, puppets, or animatronics are far more convincing when used by a special effects department. Sometimes that is true. CGI has been misused, sometimes it can be overdone, sometimes it might not be done enough, and sometimes it wasn't needed at all, but does that meant that models are always the answer?

The practical effects in John Carpenter's The Thing do hold up a lot better today than the CGI used in the 2011 prequel. Much as I enjoyed the latter film I can't deny that. However, perhaps the reason the effects in the prequel are not as good has less to do with it being CGI and more to do with the fact that it was forced in at the last minute when the film was originally supposed to use similar practical effects (some of which would have been pretty good).

The reason I bring this up is because CGI can be used to great effect when used right, and sometimes models can be even less convincing when used wrong. Plenty of b-movies can testify to the flaws of both, be it the obviously fake models used in the films of the 1950's or the over-the-top CGI monstrosities envisioned in more contemporary ones, the recent Sharknado being a good example.

The fact of the matter is that really both CGI and practical effects have their merits and can be used to incredible effect when done right. To put this into perspective, let's look at to of the most groundbreaking science fiction movies of all time: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Gravity. These two films are probably the most realistic images of space ever put on film (though there are mistakes and liberties taken in both). 

The thing is that while both of these movies had amazing effects, they both relied on very different approaches to making those effects possible. 2001: A Space Odyssey may well have some of the best models ever put on film. Not a single frame of that movie was done using computer imaging. The Earth, the moon, Discovery, Jupiter, and even the famous "star gate" sequence were all handcrafted. That centrifuge you see Dave and Frank hanging out on was actually a giant rotating wheel constructed specifically for the film. The floating pen seen near the beginning was done with a clear disk. 

Now, that's not to say the filmmakers didn't have their limits. After all, the original plan was for Discovery to be travelling to Saturn. While this remains the setting of Arthur C. Clarke's novel (written alongside the script and based on early drafts), the movie ultimately opted to use Jupiter as its setting because the production team had trouble developing a convincing model of Saturn's rings.

By contrast, Gravity was shot almost entirely with CGI. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney wore partial spacesuits, but the visors on their helmets were computer generated to make it easier to see the actors' faces underneath. Some models were constructed for the action scenes but those were still shot against solid-colored backdrops that were later removed to make way for the vastness of space. Even that underwater scene at the very end was shot in a studio against a green screen. 

The results were still amazing, possibly even on par with the effects of 2001. The visuals seen in Gravity were so amazing that specific shots taken out of context could easily be mistaken for actual photographs from orbit. All of this was done with a few models and A LOT of computer graphics. CGI has been growing in popularity since the 90's and it can be used extraordinarily well. Jurassic Park is one of the earliest films to really use CGI and those dinosaurs still hold up well today.

That said, both CGI and practical effects have their own strengths and weaknesses. One advantage of practical effects is that during production it gives the actors something to interact with. CGI can be used to achieve all kinds of objectives, ranging from creating whole environments as in Gravity to something as small as removing unwanted details from the background. Done right, and the result can be something wonderful. Done wrong, and it will look extremely fake and lazy, which will drive away your audience unless that was the intention.

CGI can be used poorly, but just because something is done through models or puppets does not automatically mean it will be any more convincing. Plenty of b-movies can testify to how both can be misused. Modern b-movies, such as those of The Asylum or even the recent cult favorite Sharknado often include hastily edited CGI monstrosities. This is usually the kind of thing people think of when they talk about how bad CGI can be, but older b-movies weren't much better.

B-movies of the 1950's often relied on practical effects since CGI was not yet a viable option, but because they were always so cheap the effects would usually be every bit as bad as the CGI of their modern counterparts. Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space is notorious for its terrible special effects, such as the infamous and obviously fake flying saucers.

If you look closely, you can see the strings.

Plan 9 From Outer Space is really just the best-known example. You don't have to dig too deep into b-movies to find really cheesy ones with lots of (sometimes entertainingly) bad effects. Another good example I have come across would be some of the Japanese b-movies centered around "Gamera" (basically, a giant turtle-like monster who I suspect was intended to cash in on the success of Godzilla and its sequels). Gamera himself is a really weird and not very convincing creature, but one film in the series, Attack of the Monsters (I know, super-original, right?) has this other creature that is obviously played by an actor crawling around in a top-heavy suit.

So really, whether CGI or practical effects ought to be used really depends on the nature of the project. Practical effects may be easier for the actors to interact with but they can be every bit as unconvincing as CGI, and sometimes done right, CGI can be even more convincing than practical effects. The two are not mutually exclusive either. A film can also work effectively by using a bit of both, and to see how that can work you need to look no further than Peter Jackson. 

The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit both make extensive use of both CGI and practical effects. Many of the creatures we see across both films are computer generated but a lot of the sets were largely built by hand, sometimes with a green screen to help fill in the background. In some cases, though, the lines are blurred and one effect requires a bit of both.

A perfect example is the practice of motion capture, where an actor wears a suit that becomes a skeleton for a CGI model. Quite simply, the actor's suit consists of various lights all over their body, and they perform the necessary motions for their character. Then in post-production, the actor is removed but the lights remain (thus capturing the basic movements) and it becomes a frame around which to design the new character. 

Gollumn is a good example from Jackson's films, but such characters are all over the place. The CGI used for Smaug the dragon was incredible, but to make that image possible, the production team had to start with footage of Benedict Cumberbatch in a funny suit. In that sense, Smaug as seen in the final product could be considered a mix of practical and computer generated effects, since while the final product was created by computer rendering it was all based on the movements of a live actor.

Ultimately, neither extreme is better or worse. When done right, CGI and practical effects are both equally capable of making something believable and interesting. CGI can be misused and subsequently look fake, but the same can also be said about models, puppets, or animatronics.  It's all a matter of what kind of movie is being made and how the people involved use the resources available.

Character Profile: Galadriel

My Women in Film blogathon is ending in a week, and I got to thinking about writing another entry on an interesting character. I've been getting lots of good choices and so I thought this one might be something a bit different from the others, also a bit out of my usual comfort zone as I'm not normally big on fantasy. This is a brave an noble woman, wise and complex, one with a lot of power and influence... and did I mention that she originated from a novel published in 1954.

The Lord of the Rings may have a very predominantly male cast but it certainly makes up for that by making the few female characters especially memorable. Across the original trilogy the girls get their heroic moments: Arwen gets to save the life of Frodo Baggins and Eowyn manages to kill a major antagonist (granted, she did have help from a Hobbit, but she was still the one who delivered the final blow).

I've even defended the addition of Tauriel to The Hobbit. Before that I was willing to defend Itaril (a character who was rumored to be added to the films early in production, supposedly to be played by Saoirse Ronan), if only on the grounds that we knew nothing about her beyond rumors, which were later proven false.

Still, there is one female character in the series who tends to stand out. She doesn't have much screentime but her roles across both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are crucial, and that is Galadriel. If Sauron is the embodiment of all things that are evil in Middle-Earth, than Galadriel is exactly the opposite: she is everything that is noble or good about their world.

Galadriel may not be known to take up arms the same as Eowyn or Tauriel, but she is quite possibly the most powerful figure in Middle-Earth, and yet she also knows how to handle that power. She knows what is right and will stand up, doing everything she deems necessary. Even if she does not herself take the ring to mordor, she is always watching Frodo and even helps him find confidence during some of the more desperate moments of the quest.

That's just the thing. Galadriel might not be a warrior in her own right, but she knows what's good and stands for it at all costs. She knows what needs to be done and is determined to see that it is accomplished.

There is always a sense of genuine compassion whenever she is present. She is kind to everyone, even those she should have reason to hate (she hardly objected to leaving Gimli a lock of her hair, something even he thought she'd never do) and does everything in her power to see that good ultimately triumphs. It may have been Gollum who ultimately destroyed the ring but it might never have gotten that far if she hadn't given Frodo the extra push he needed to get to that point. 

With a story as male-dominated as the writings of Tolkien, the fact that we can have a character as strong as Galadriel is an achievement in itself. She is a great character especially because of how she stands out in such a story, being one of the most powerful characters in it and the perfect embodiment for all that is good. It makes her an excellent contrast to Sauron, the embodiment of evil, and a character that is rightfully looked up to by the male heroes.

A Tribute to Georges Méliès: Pioneer of Cinema

Some people that I know have this silly notion that I hate all European directors, and when I point out several that I do like I'm told they conformed to Hollywood standards and thus don't count. Well, much as I've criticized Jean-Luc Godard it's time now to go a little bit further back and look at a good French director. Not only a talented man but quite possibly one of the most significant auteurs in the history of film, the man who made a few crucial discoveries that would begin to shape cinema as an art form and clear the way for others to shape it into what it is today. That man was Georges Méliès.

You may or may not immediately recognize the name, but either way there was no doubting the influence this man had on the film industry. You may remember him from Martin Scorese's Hugo where he was played by Ben Kingsley and we got to learn in great detail much of his life story. Alternatively you may also recall one of his most famous movies, 1902's La Voyage dans la Lune (better known in English as A Trip to the Moon) and its famous image of the bullet crashing into the moon's eye. As a film genre, science fiction would not become widely recognized until the 1950's with George Pal's Destination Moon, but it has been a part of cinema since the beginning thanks to Méliès.

Méliès' story is indeed a fascinating one. It is a tale of triumph and tragedy. Before Méliès came along, film was just a passing commercial fad and nobody understood its full potential. For a while there was a popular attraction known as the "nickelodeon" (not to be confused with the modern children's television network). Essentially the way it worked was you would walk into a bar or some other public place and there would be a few boxes you could look into. Placing a nickel into one would allow you to glimpse a moving image, you'd watch that and then you would go to the next one and put another nickel in and see that image. For a while they were popular but after a while people got bored with them. It was believed there was no future.

Meanwhile, we also had the Lumiere Brothers, a pair of filmmakers who also never fully understood the potential of what they had access to. To them, a film camera was not much different from a photo camera. You simply set it up and recorded things as they happened, the only difference being that you could now produce a moving picture instead of a single still frame. They did a lot of these documentations of everyday occurrences like workers leaving a factory or a train pulling into a station, and loved to show them off to audiences. 

Enter Georges Méliès, a simple magician who became so fascinated with the "moving pictures" he decided to create a few of his own. Then one day he made an incredible discovery. The story goes that he was one day out on the side of the road with his camera. At that point he was still just photographing it, but then his camera jammed and it took him some time to fix it. 

When he went back over the footage, he saw something remarkable (I've heard a few different versions of exactly what, but the one I've usually described is that he saw a car apparently disappear). By total accident, Méliès discovered the "stop trick" (a technique he would use a lot in the years to come) and realized that film was much more than a simple photographic tool. 

At the time, he may not have fully understood the world he was about to open up. He certainly would not have realized how many people would be inspired by and build off of his work. He would not have known how much of an impact this simple accident would have on the following decades, unknowingly clearing a path for thousands of filmmakers to come, making it possible for this very blog to exist. 

To him, as a magician, he was simply interested in creating illusions and that was exactly what he did. Méliès realized that film could be used not just for documenting everyday life but also to create incredible fantasies. In the years to come he would gain his own studio with a cast and crew and plenty of then-cutting edge special effects at his disposal with which he let his imagination run wild. He was also the first person to really edit his movies, although the nature of his editing may seem primitive to modern audiences (he'd always shoot entire scenes from one angle, although he would often put each scene in a different set and used his "stop trick" to create various illusions of transformations and people appearing and disappearing).

The sad part is one that you should be all too familiar with if you've seen Hugo. As great as Méliès was he ultimately just could not keep up with other filmmakers. For a long time his works were a novelty, but then Edwin Porter came along with The Life of an American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery which brought about more sophisticated filmmaking techniques. Those were followed by D.W. Griffith making the first feature film Birth of a Nation which brought about methods of filming and editing still used today. Various other misfortunes began to pile up on him and a lot of Méliès' films were destroyed in order to re-purpose their material for use in World War I.  In the end, Méliès ended up running a toy shop in Gare Montparnasse, a train station in Paris (you may remember this part being explored in Hugo) and died of cancer in 1938.

The influence of Méliès on modern cinema cannot be denied. He was the first person to recognize that film was an art form, not just a new way to document things as they happened. In that sense, Méliès is essentially the first major auteur of cinema. Looking at his films it is clear that the man had not only quite the imagination but also a sheer passion for the films he made, and it all ties back to his beginnings as a magician. He simply loved to create illusions, but found a whole new way to express that love which would open the door for many others over the following decades. Even today many of the greatest filmmakers owe something to Georges Méliès.

Sadly, only a small fraction of Méliès' films have survived, but the ones that have continue to be studied and analyzed. Even with technological advancements since his time it is hard not to see his passion carried through his work. Méliès was an actor, a magician, and the first major film director, and he was a genius in all those respects.