A Tale of Two Fairy Tales

[rdansky]

Friday night, my wife and I went to see a double feature at the Carolina Theater of Legend and Labyrinth. One of these two has aged well. One of them hasn’t.

Legend, directed by Ridley Scott, is by far the better made film. It’s gorgeous, full of striking tableaus and artfully composed shots. And it’s awful. The script, by William Hjortsberg, is a

Comments

[nick_kaufmann]

Labyrinth is a pretty good example of a movie about a young woman's complete psychotic break, with said psychosis presented at the end, with the reappearance of her muppet friends in her bedroom, as somehow funner and more preferable than her regular, banal life. Other than that, it's pretty terrible.

Legend is also awful. I used to listen to the soundtrack all the time, because apparently I was crazy.

[rdansky]

This is one of those "I must maintain an air of detached irony at all times or they'll make me move to New Jersey" moments, isn't it? It's OK. You can tell me. I won't let Lena Dunham know.

[nick_kaufmann]

LOL! No, I just saw both of them again recently and they didn't hold up for me, is all. Both of them feature the same pet peeve of mine, which is plot lines that go nowhere or never reach fruition. But I still maintain Labyrinth could easily be read as a young woman's psychotic break, regardless of whether that was the intention of the filmmakers. For me, it's the only reading of the film that keeps my interest. When I first saw it as a kid, I'm sure I felt differently about it. But now? Now I see too many of its flaws.

[rdansky]

Interesting. I read it the opposite way - at the end the princess fantasy literally gets put away, the invitation to retreat into fantasy permanently is actively refused, and she becomes capable of a selfless act - sharing Lancelot - that she was incapable of when we first met her. The fact that the villains of the Labyrinth are now rehabilitated means she's in control of her rich and rewarding fantasy life, instead of it controlling her.

I agree that the film is flawed. The pacing is hinky, there are plot threads left dangling, and Jennifer Connelly is not what you'd call compelling in the lead role. But there's a humanity to it that was utterly lacking in Legend, and that still holds my attention.

Also, glad to see you're not getting banished to Hohokus by the irony police :-)

[notthebuddha]

No fair on inserting real medicine into a fairy tale. If science can be suspended to let the forest people be frozen solid before they can react, it can remain suspended until the the thaw and their reanimation, cell walls intact.

[rdansky]

I take the fact that we didn't close the circle and have a joyful reunion at the end of the film as proof that the nice family Lily intrudes on remained propsicles.

Or, to quote Monty Python, "There you go again, you're always bringing class into it."

[notthebuddha]

Why would they stay frozen after the spell was broken?

[rdansky]

I'm sure they'd thaw. The rate at which they thawed would be the problem.