SARAH SARAH FRRRRRIIIIIIIEEEENNND!

The other day I was thinking about the movie Labyrinth.  Is Labyrinth the greatest piece of cinema of all time?  Probably not.  Does it hold up?  Maybe.  Is it a movie that I constantly think about, and may have had more effect on my life than any other movie?  Yes.  From the moment I first watched it I fell deeply in love with both Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie.  The character Sarah was young and beautiful and a dreamer.  She makes a mistake and has to deal with the consequences.  Once in the Labyrinth she shows her smarts and her determination.  Even though she chooses down, when you should clearly never choose down, I had an immediate crush on Jennifer Connelly that has never gone away.  I sat there and projected myself into the puppet characters.  I was Hoggle who looked at Sarah’s innocence and beauty and knew that she could never love such a wretched cowardly ugly creature as he and I were.  And my heart broke when I realized I was Ludo as well the big dumb animal just searching for a friend.  Even Sir Didymus let me see that loyalty and the virtue of friendship was important.    

            Then there was Bowie, Jareth the goblin King.  As I looked at him with his insane Tina Turner hair and his dramatic eye makeup, strutting about and singing with a devilish smile or a moody stare, I realized I was in love again.  In love with the dark side.  In love with the secret pathetic vulnerability of evil.  I wanted to be him.  I wanted to be this tortured soul who stole babies and turned the world upside down for Jennifer Connelly.  I also really wanted to go to that crazy masquerade even if it was a hallucination.  These crushes were very confusing when I was young.  It is only now that I fully understand them.  Although David Bowie still is a little sexually confusing.  I mean for a kids movie there sure is a lot of David Bowie bulge bouncing around.   If you haven't seen it watch it.  You may learn something about yourself, or maybe learn more about me.