Six Thoughts After Re-Watching Labyrinth

ONE

I went and saw Labyrinth at the China Town mall last night, which meaning posting this and inviting you all to get your groove in is practically mandatory:

If you aren’t at least singing along to this, wishing you were Jareth and drawing odd looks from your workmates, then I’m afraid you are dead to me.

TWO

I love this movie. In fact, I love it with the kind of deep and abiding love that can only come from being exposed to *sheer, raw awesomeness* when you’re very young. God knows how young, ’cause I couldn’t actually tell you when I first saw it, but I’ve watched the film *a lot*.

Like, as often as I’ve watched the Princess Bride a lot. Or as often as I re-watch The Gilmore Girls or The West Wing a lot.

And yet, it’s not a movie that I love unconditionally. It’s simply the bits that I love, I really love, while the bits that I don’t love leave me kind of ambivalent.

I am not, for example, a fan of the Firey’s with their removable limbs and random singing (I’m frequently irritated by people bursting into song in movies. It makes musicals particularly painful, and Labyrinth mostly gets a pass on account of David Bowie).

I’m also not a fan of the entire sequence at the end, in which the pre-climax can largely be summed up as have Sarah run around in an Escher painting while David Bowie sings something vaguely threatening. They went to such effort to build up the sidekicks in the film, and they largely get set aside for no good reason. Bah, I say. Bah.

THREE

And yet, immediately after David Bowie’s threatening (and somewhat pointless) singing, he gets one of the greatest villain monologues ever:

*Everything*! Everything that you wanted I have done. You asked that the child be taken. I took him. You cowered before me, I was frightening. I have reordered time. I have turned the world upside down, and I have done it all for *you*! I am exhausted from living up to your expectations. Isn’t that generous?

Creepy David Bowie is my favourite David Bowie ever.

FOUR

Wanting to steal every single jacket Jareth wears in this film is the closest I’ve ever come to understanding cosplay.

I’d probably steal the walking stick too.

There’s on way in hell I’m taking the pants, though. No-one should be wearing pants that goddamn tight.

FIVE

It’s possible this blog post explains far to much about me worldview.

SIX

One of the fascinating things about watching a film like Labyrinth in a public mall is the moment when people wander past, catch sight of what’s on the screen, and momentarily become kids again. It just kept happening, time and again, and a handful of people actually stopped and sat down to watch the rest of the film.

And really, so long as that happens and keeps on happening, there is something going right in the world.