Archive for the 'Movies and TV' category

Beyond the Bulge: 8 Other Reasons to Watch Labyrinth

Apr 24 2011 Published by under Movies and TV

I recently watched Labyrinth (1986) with my kids via Netflix download play. The screenplay for Labyrinth was written by Jim Henson of Muppets fame, Canadian children’s author Dennis Lee, and Welsh screenwriter and Monty Python troupe member Terry Jones, and the film was produced by George Lucas, among others.

It’s about a 15 year old girl, Sarah, played by Jennifer Connelly, in one of her first roles (she was 15 at the time herself). As the movie opens, she is off in a field, a dreamy teenager in a vaguely Renaissance costume, reciting dramatic lines from a play, Labyrinth. She suddenly realizes she’s late, and runs home, where her annoyed parents are waiting for her to take up sitting duties for her baby brother Toby.

Sarah is aggrieved that she has to take care of Toby, and when he won’t stop crying, she wishes aloud — reciting lines from the play — that the goblins take him away. Cue the arrival of Jareth, the Goblin King, played by David Bowie, who promptly does just what she asked, after demonstrating his skillz with the Fushigi magic gravity balls. Jareth’s castle is surrounded by a vast labyrinth, and Sarah has to make her way through it in 13 hours, or Toby will be turned into a goblin. She makes some friends along the way, there is music and dancing, and lots of near misses.

We (myself and my two sons, ages 9 and 11) enjoyed it, and when I went online to look at commentary on the film, I was stunned that the aspect of the film under most intense scrutiny — and debate — is the bulge in David Bowie’s pants. Was there a codpiece? Did his pants get tighter as the film progressed? Was he — er — excited? And, uh, apparently circumcision is not quite the thing in England. And this is not just hormone crazed 12 year olds hanging out at IMDB: even professional reviews make reference to it (in the Washington Post, for example, the pants are referred to as “over-revelatory”).

I can’t answer those vital and timeless questions, but this is a good movie, not a great one, and there are other reasons to watch it, which I shall now list:

1. Connelly’s acting in this film is not exactly Oscar material, but her character is a Grade A selfish bitch, which was refreshing after so many too good to be true heroines. I had some genuine shaken baby fear for Toby when he was under her watch, and she’s quite violent when she needs to be (pulling the heads off some creatures and nearly suffocating others).  Although the film is constructed as a typical quest, in which the physical journey is mirrored by character growth, in fact, the film gets more and more solipsistic as it progresses. Just as she desired in the opening scene, this world is entirely under Sarah’s control, and the only way that is possible, is if she is the only thing that exists.

Her sidekicks, Hoggle, Ludo and Sir Didymus, have no existence or purpose beyond Sarah’s quest: “Should you need us… for any reason at all…”.  In the final controntation with Jareth, he complains: “Everything that you wanted I have done. You asked that child be taken; I took him. You cowered before me and I was frightening. … I have done it all for you! I am exhausted from living up to your expectations of me.”

The world really does revolve around this teenager.

2. The Bog of Eternal Stench. I mean, come on! A farting, belching swamp. One drop and you stink forever. Good stuff.

3. The lack of exposition. This movie does not spell it all out for you. Or any of it, actually. This may be because it is making itself up as it goes along. To take one obvious unanswered question: Jareth is humanoid, yet he is king of the goblins. So when he threatens to turn Toby into “one of us” — which “us” does he mean? Will Toby get tight lycra pants and frosty eye shadow? Or warts and horns?

4. You can use this film to teach your kids logic.

Sarah confronts two guards, guarding two doors. One door leads to sudden death, the other to the castle. She may only ask one guard a question, but one of them always lies and one always tells the truth. This is a version of the familiar knights and knaves logic puzzle, and Sarah solves it, boosting her confidence, and bringing her closer to Toby.

5. Music and lyrics by David Bowie. The songs are pure 80s cheese (synthesizers + orchestral stuff). The lyrics make little sense: “Chilly down with the fire gang/Think small with the fire gang/Bad hep with the fire gang/when your thing gets wild/Chilly Down”, or “You remind me of the babe./What babe? /The babe with the power. /What power? /The power of voodoo. /Who do? /You do. /Do what? /Remind me of the babe…”. Still, I will take this over Mandy Moore/Disney stuff any day.

6. The balance of the whimsical and the grotesque. The shots of the Labyrinth are really lovely:

And of the Escher inspired castle:

But there are also a lot of — er — earthly nondelights, like the Bog of Eternal Stench, or Jareth’s goblin henchmen fighting over sausages and picking their noses. When Sarah first meets dwarf Hoggle, he is taking a long piss in a fountain. A closer look reveals the fountain is made up of well-endowed pissing dwarfs. Hoggle proceeds to take out a weapon of some kind and exterminate several fairies, shooting them dead midflight. The Fireys pull off their own body parts and throw them into a fire as they dance. And so on.

7. The dream/masquerade ball sequence. Video here.

Sarah gets poisoned by Hoggle, and wakes up transformed into a very adult looking beauty, dressed for the masquerade ball Jareth is hosting in the castle. It’s the closest Jareth comes to seducing Sarah, creeptastic as that is. It’s a very engaging scene, both visually, and in terms of plot, which none of the rest of the film quite matches in intensity. Some folks in LA host a Labyrinth inspired masquerade ball every year.

8. This film is a shrine to the phallus. I know, I said I wasn’t going to dwell on Jareth’s crotch. And I’m not. But even putting aside the many, many, many distracting shots of Bowie’s crotch (at least 6 different pairs of tight pants. According to one blogger, Neil Gaiman once said Bowie’s crotch should have gotten its own trailer on the set), some of them up close from a dwarf’s eye view…

…there is much to behold.

The goblins, like the dwarfs, have protruding crotches, noses and horns. And there’s this:

When crotches, horns and noses aren’t enough, there’s always having a phallus grow out of a head:

The masquerade scene is, from one point of view, just dancing phalluses (the masks) and their excretions (white pearls and dripping white candle wax hanging all about). Tell me I am making this up:

Pearl Necklaces?

Let me touch your -- er -- nose?

Watch out, or I will poke you with my -- oh, never mind.

In this bit, Sarah is startled when a snake pops out of a box. Talk about subtext becoming text:

It is not hard to read this scene as the literal drugging and metaphorical rape of a virginal girl. I have no idea why Henson’s imagination, once he decided to make a more serious film (this was his second, after Dark Crystal), was so dominated by phallic imagery.

Fortunately, all of this will fly right over your kids’ heads. It’s a fun movie that kids – especially those with a gross sense of humor — will enjoy.

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Film Review: Baby Face, starring Barbara Stanwyck (1933)

Apr 24 2010 Published by under Movies and TV

Baby Face was the subject of our culture club this month, and what a terrific movie it is. This movie was so racy that even in pre-Code 1933, several scenes, bits of dialogue, and images had been censored. The original pre-censored copy was discovered in 2004. The Netflix DVD we watched had both versions. It’s only about 75 minutes long.

Barbara Stanwyck stars as the irresistable Lilly Powers, whom we meet working in her father’s Pittburgh prohibition era sleazy speakeasy.

the film's portrayal of working class masculinity, at least in the pre-edit version, is unambiguous

We learn she has been pimped out since the age of 14. When her father dies, Lilly takes the advice of a Nietzsche-quoting (Will to Power and Thoughts Out Of Season) German immigrant cobbler who has been a father figure, and heads for the big city. Once there, noticing the wealth all around her, she proceeds to sleep and scheme her way to riches, leaving a trail of ever more powerful and wealthy brokenhearted men. The original version ends with Lilly married to a man she loves, richer than she ever dreamed (the edit has her — totally implausibly — losing her fortune, returning to steel town, poor but happy with the man she loves.)

Stanwyck is sexy and in control and amazing to watch, and seeing a very young John Wayne as an early conquest was loads of fun, but most of my enjoyment of the movie came from just being amazed at the frank way it dealt with sex and pondering what it was trying to say about it.

Lilly is a very sympathetic protagonist, and in the initial version she goes to Gotham not just to get rich, but to exercise her will to power. Here’s the quote from her mentor:

A woman, young, beautiful like you, can get anything she wants in the world. Because you have power over men. But you must use men, not let them use you. You must be a master, not a slave. Look here — Nietzsche says, “All life, no matter how we idealize it, is nothing more nor less than exploitation.” That’s what I’m telling you. Exploit yourself. Go to some big city where you will find opportunities! Use men! Be strong! Defiant! Use men to get the things you want!

Unfortunately, her quest looks vastly less interesting in the edited version of this speech, which a member of the Studio Relations Committee wrote:

A woman, young, beautiful like you, can get anything she wants in the world. But there is a right way and a wrong way. Remember, the price of the wrong way is too great. Go to some big city where you will find opportunities! Don’t let people mislead you. You must be a master, not a slave. Be clean, be strong, defiant, and you will be a success.

In the original version, Lilly was not the subject of moral disapproval: the weak, duplicitous, cuckolded men were. Although they were in suits and ties, and employed at the big skyscraper bank (screen shots of which symbolized Lilly’s ascent), Lilly was the one who was winning at capitalism.

In some ways, the film worked as a kind of feminine (but not feminist) fantasy. Although Lilly undeniably suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her father and the men who paid him for her body as a teenager, we don’t see that. What we see onscreen is a woman who, although surrounded by men frequently drunk and in a state of nearly insane lust, is always in total control.

Lilly protecting herself from sexual assault in a scene cut for the theatrical release

In the real world, a file clerk who gets caught having sex in the ladies room with her married boss would lose her job and be disgraced. In Baby Face, the boss is fired and Lilly becomes the mistress of the man who fired him. [This is an amazing scene, especially the moment we see Lilly seeing her lover's boss watching her in the mirror.]

Another interesting thing about this movie is Lilly’s relationship with the one African American character, Chico, Lilly’s friend/maid. It wasn’t easy to find any stills with Chico, but here’s one:

As an aside, the scene pictured above was edited. In the initial version, the camera pans slowly and leeringly up Stanwyck’s body. In the edited version, the camera focuses on her face and shoulders.

Lilly’s complex relationship with Chico provides some of the more poignant moments in the film, as on a Christmas Eve when Chico heads out for a night with friends and Lilly is all by her lonesome (married men can’t usually get away on holidays), and near the end, when Chico tries to intercede and Lilly firmly, verbally and physically, reminds her of her inferior racial and class status.

In the end, love prevails, although it doesn’t clearly prevail over money in the original version (it’s ambiguous whether she and her husband stay wealthy — he’s facing a massive lawsuit thanks to her).

So is this a romance? I don’t think so. It’s Lilly’s story. We don’t even really get a sense of why she falls for the man she does, except perhaps that he’s the bank president, so there’s no higher conquest, and the narrative has to close at some point.

Lilly is smart, tough, beautiful, driven, and, in the end, happy. I think if this movie were made today, Lilly would been raped, beaten, and wound up poor and lonely. What do you think?

Here’s the theatrical trailer for your enjoyment.

“She played the love game … with everything she had… for everything they had .. and made ‘IT’ pay!”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6tmkW_ykt0

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