The spell­bind­ing lega­cy of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth

Thir­ty years after audi­ences were first lured by the mys­te­ri­ous charis­ma of the Gob­lin King, the cult appeal of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth remains as strong as ever. So how has this piece of prac­ti­cal mag­ic man­aged to endure for so long, and why does it seem to res­onate so strong­ly with grown-up audi­ences in particular?

Labyrinth fol­lows 16-year-old Sarah (Jen­nifer Con­nel­ly) as she jour­neys through an enor­mous maze in an attempt to save her baby broth­er from Jareth, the Gob­lin King (David Bowie). The film was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten by Ter­ry Jones of Mon­ty Python fame, who, inter­est­ing­ly, based the script on con­cept art by Bri­an Froud, who had pre­vi­ous­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with Jim Hen­son on his oth­er cult ​’80s fan­ta­sy, The Dark Crys­tal.

The sto­ry goes some way to explain­ing the appeal for old­er audi­ences – it can eas­i­ly be inter­pret­ed as Sarah’s com­ing of age, her awak­en­ing to the respon­si­bil­i­ties of adult­hood and her own sex­u­al­i­ty. That Labyrinth has retained a core adult fan base is indica­tive of Jones’ idio­syn­crat­ic wit and the fact that he had a major influ­ence on the film despite the script being passed to var­i­ous oth­er writers.

But it’s not all about the script. Hen­son used pup­pets, cre­at­ed by Jim Henson’s Crea­ture Shop, in the same way most oth­er films at the time would have used ani­ma­tion, and most films now use CGI. This gave his films an unusu­al tac­tile qual­i­ty, where he called his own fan­ta­sy into ques­tion: by using pup­pets he was film­ing some­thing that exist­ed not just in the world of the film, but in the world of the film stu­dio. This brought his fan­ta­sy char­ac­ters to life in a way that no form of ani­ma­tion can, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly draw­ing atten­tion to the fan­ta­sy – they nev­er looked real­is­tic, but cru­cial­ly they were real.

This fan­tas­ti­cal uni­verse of Labyrinth is also extreme­ly detailed – there is always some­thing hap­pen­ing in the back­ground, and this means we start to look deep­er. Like­wise, the plot is just com­plex enough to encour­age us to decode the odd rules of the King­dom, much in the same way an MC Esch­er paint­ing (a def­i­nite influ­ence on the film) draws you in by invit­ing you to fig­ure out how it functions.

Then, of course, there is David Bowie, who is an intrin­sic part of the voodoo charm of Labyrinth. His act­ing, as always, is stylised and com­pelling in a unique way, and he is per­fect­ly suit­ed to the role. Jareth is a daz­zling char­ac­ter we feel at once threat­ened by and com­pul­sive­ly drawn to. This mim­ics Sarah’s feel­ings toward him – she hates him for tak­ing her broth­er, is afraid of him because of his pow­er, but she is also attract­ed to him as she begins to dis­cov­er her sexuality.

Labyrinth is more care­ful­ly craft­ed and nuanced than it may first appear. Hen­son seam­less­ly com­bined mas­ter­ful artistry with auda­cious, immer­sive fan­ta­sy sto­ry­telling and an exu­ber­ant, youth­ful tone, result­ing in a film that has man­aged to stand the test of time while con­tin­u­ing to evoke a dis­tinct­ly retro spirit.