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Apologies to all my friends who’ve had to put up with me talking about the movie Labyrinth lately. I recently caught the tail end of it on TV. It’s one of those things I like that just kinda hangs out in the background until I remember it, and it springs back into focus. Hence the blog post. Thanks to anyone who’s listened to me ramble about it lately!

Anyway, I know Labyrinth is kind of a love it or hate it movie. It’s full of the magic of Jim Henson and his signature puppets and an incredibly unusual fantasy world, with the flair of the 80s and David Bowie‘s musical interludes. That quirky combination means people either really like it or don’t at all, I’ve noticed. I’m sure someone’s in the middle ground somewhere! But you definitely have to have a taste for it.

So, if that sounds like something you wanna watch, stop reading this post! Spoilers below! The whole plot of the whole movie is going to be talked about here. If you don’t want to know anything (and I seriously suggest watching it first, it is a fun movie), the come back and check it out later (or don’t, either way. All up to you).

So here’s the point to that (probably too long) introduction. Labyrinth does an amazing job of telling a fantastic story you can enjoy on the surface, but dig deeper and learn even more about the entire adventure. You might notice that many of the objects in Sarah’s room later appear in the Labyrinth.

First, there’s the play she recites from in the beginning of the movie. It happens to be called Labyrinth, contains the line she uses at the end to defeat the goblin king. Beyond that, you might also notice plushies of Hoggle, Sir Didymus, Ludo, and a Firey. The M.C. Escher painting she runs through at the end of the film to get to Toby is a poster hanging on her wall. And Sarah owns a music box with a girl in a dress that looks a lot like what she wore in the masquerade scene.

Most notably, Sarah has two newspaper cutouts on her mirror. They’re stories about an actor and his

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new girlfriend. Not to big of a deal, except…the actor is David Bowie. And, according to the internet, the novelization explains that the woman he’s with is Sarah’s mother. In the beginning of the movie, we see she lives with her dad, step-mom, and step-brother Toby. This adds a whole new layer to this whole story.

Sarah’s story is all about her learning that she has to grow up, but growing up doesn’t mean leaving behind imagination and being a kid. It just means knowing when to be an adult and when to be a kid. Her journey through the Labyrinth is her learning that lesson. She goes from whining about how it isn’t fair, to realizing her teenage woes, her anger with her family, doesn’t have to cause her so much stress and irresponsibility. All her childish whining has no power over her. But she still knows how to be a kid, as shown by her dance party with the labyrinth inhabitants at the end. At least, that’s how I interpret the movie. The labyrinth and Jareth, I think, represent all that. All the emotions she’s dealing with, having to grow up so fast and wanting to feel accepted.

You can get all that just by watching it, but there’s all those hidden secrets in Sarah’s room that just add another layer to it, that make it that much better. Stories that hide their callbacks, their deeper backstory for people to dig up and find and theorize about feel so much more alive. It leaves the audience satisfied but gives them material to keep digging up if they’re still interested, if they still want more from the movie. Learning to add that element a story, to plan a lot deeper than just what’s on the surface is an invaluable writing skill.

To read more from this blog, check out Frame Rate: Writing backwards.