Gal said no to Jareth the Goblin King. How can you not love her?
I don’t think I need to tell anyone about the movie Labyrinth, except that everyone should see it at least once. It’s in my top ten favorite movies.
I’ve noticed a trend in making this list for my favorite characters, in that a lot of my faves are kinda horrible people. Sarah isn’t really horrible, she’s fifteen and in the beginning acts like a fifteen year-old who’s stuck babysitting her baby brother while her parents more or less ignore her. She’s a little selfish, but again, she’s fifteen. And even though she doesn’t like her little brother, it’s very sibling-like that she immediately and without hesitation tries to brave a magic labyrinth to get him back. And during the process makes friends with just about every creature she meets. There’s also a latent theme of Sarah growing up and not holding on to childish things. When we pan over her room, she’s has a bunch of toys and childhood books, not to mention that Sarah gets mad that Toby has a stuffed bear of hers. The dump scene is all about Sarah finally letting go of all that stuff weighing her down, and at the end, she’s putting it all away.
The novelization gives a little insight to the various articles and pictures, giving hints as to where her mother, a stage performer, might be: having run off with a fellow performer (and if you look closely at the newspaper clippings, the other performer is David Bowie). She’s finally letting go of being more or less abandoned by her mother. And while I enjoy the theories that the labyrinth was real, and so was Jareth, who had fallen in love with Sarah over the course of the film, or that Sarah was a reincarnation of his former love, I’ve always liked fantasy worlds that are clearly a coping mechanism for the character. Like in the 2003 adaptation of Peter Pan, where Captain Hook is played by Jason Isaacs, who also plays Wendy’s father. The characters and places of the Labyrinth are right there in Sarah’s room, constructs of who she is, taken to a fantastical level so that she can learn and grow up.
Her line at the end, “You have no power over me.” Those events in her past, the way things are now, they have no power over her anymore. She can live now.
Not much else to say except this movie’s awesome, and I’ve always really liked the character development that Sarah Williams goes through.
