Labyrinth (1986): Is Labyrinth Secretly A Film About Grief? And If So, Does It Change How We Watch It?

Ben and Rob step into Labyrinth, Jim Henson's 1986 fantasy adventure that turned a puppeteer's most personal creative risk into a genre-defining cult classic. Directed by Jim Henson from a screenplay credited to Monty Python's Terry Jones, the film stars David Bowie as the Goblin King Jareth and a fourteen year old Jennifer Connelly as Sarah, a girl who has thirteen hours to solve an ever-shifting maze and rescue her baby brother from Jareth's clutches.

How did a limo ride home from a Dark Crystal screening turn into a story about goblins stealing babies, and why did the finished script pass through the hands of a Monty Python legend, a Fraggle Rock lyricist, and George Lucas before anyone was happy with it? What made David Bowie the obvious choice to play Jareth when Sting, Prince, and Michael Jackson were all in the running, and how much of the film's most memorable moments came down to pure, unscripted chemistry on set? Why did a film this ambitious flop so badly on release and what does it say that a story about a girl choosing to grow up came at the exact moment its director's own life was falling apart?

And finally… what does it really mean?!

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