Day 51: Eve's Apple in Fairyland - "Legend" (1985)

I suppose it’s the way of all New Year’s resolutions.
January = Discipline.
February = Peevishness.

When people work out as a resolution, I think right about now is when they start trying new sports to ‘keep things fresh.’ Cross-training with kickboxing. Power yoga. Polo.

I don’t have a horse, but I do know Ed Decker. (http://www.edwindecker.com/) And between his haiku movie reviews, and published poems of life behind the Happy Hour counter, Barzilla, I think I could have a solution for the 20 movies waiting in the queue.

Stay tuned.

For today, let’s talk women and evil.

Film 31: The Legend of “Legend” (1985)

Written by William Hjortsberg
Directed by Ridley Scott

Okay, you’ve seen it. (And if you haven’t, you were obviously not part of the Class of ‘89.)

BUT I now own Scott’s “Ultimate Director’s Cut” – and it’s a whole new ballgame. Half an hour longer with a totally different score (the more operatic original by Jerry Goldsmith instead of the funkily awesome Tangerine Dream), and a stronger emphasis on the dark things that go bump in your soul…I am so in!

Before I really get going, a few caveats:
Ø If you don’t like fairy tale or fantasy, you’re probably not gonna get this movie.
Ø I became addicted to this flick in the 9th grade, even before I saw it, after catching a TV “Behind the Scenes” special about it. It’s an essential piece of my adolescence, so I have very little real perspective on how much it might appeal to others. It’s like asking me why “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is one of the best movies ever. No words for why. It just is.
Ø If you comment that this is all just silliness, I will ignore you.

Just to get everyone up to speed, the plot: Princess Lily (crazy beautiful Mia Sara) frolics with Child of the Forest Jack (crazy young Tom Cruise). He adores her and decides to share the forest’s most sacred animals with her – the unicorns. He means for them to watch from afar; she decides they’re far too beautiful not to be pet. She does just that. All hell (here represented by the perfect Tim Curry as Darkness) breaks loose.

Now for the best part – Darkness is himself captivated by Lily’s innocence. Sexually captivated. He does his best to seduce her…plays her beautiful music, sends out a mysterious, masked dancer in a magnificent (and revealing) gown and stays hidden until Lily, dizzy from twirling around the room with this sensual creature, at last opens her arms and invites the dancer in.

My big question: will Lily’s seduction ballet remain one of the sexiest things on film?

Answer: Hoo-yeah.

Even without the off-kilter carousel music, this scene – with Sara panting, trembling and finally embracing the unknown power – rocks the house. Why do you feel so tingly, Lily? Mmm?

And here, let me offer an answer. But first…

Scott’s two cents: he wanted Lily to be a cat. Literally. As soon as she embraced the unknown, she was accepting evil, and so she would transform slowly – as she took each small step to the ‘other’ side – ending up as a silky black hybrid, human/feline, much as Darkness is a modified satyr – half-human/half-horse. Then, at the end, when heroic, unspoilt Jack (who has killed a-plenty by that time, but of course only evil boys and girls) saves and kisses her – boom. Back to lovely, all-human Princess Lily. Budget and technical considerations squashed this idea, and I think we can all sleep a little better for that.

Second, the web. Many geeks out there love this flick as much as I do, bless ‘em, while there are a few who never got it (Colin Jacobson at dvdmg.com – I mean you). By and large, positive or negative, they seem to agree with Scott’s interpretation of a modified “Beauty and the Beast” tale. (Scott cites Jean Cocteau’s 1946 French version as his inspiration.)

Am I the only one who sees Adam and Eve all over this?

Two innocents in the forest touch something strictly forbidden. In fact, the woman touches it. The heavens are sent whirling out of whack, and evil seeps into their protected world. She becomes ashamed of her innocence. A Very Naughty Creature tempts her to turn her back on all she knows in favor of adventure and beauty. Murder enters their sphere. And both the man and the woman realize that they’ll never be the same, that no one can be all good or all bad in the real world. We make mistakes, but they don’t have to control us. We have free will.

Sound at all familiar?

I’m sure Scott was trying to pay homage to Cocteau’s tale, but I believe that in the process, he created something very different. “Beauty and the Beast” is about sacrificing the known for the unknown. Leaving the safe harbor of home in favor of the frightening castle and monster. “Legend” suggests the opposite: adventure isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Maybe it’s because I’m a woman, and I was a girl just beginning to grow up when I saw this coming-of-age tale…but I have never seen Lily as only “good” or “evil” – much less as redeemed by Jack’s kiss at the end. I’ve drawn strength through the years from the notion that her journey is their journey. They both discover personal might in previously forbidden realms – the brute strength and subtle cunning of both war and sexual power.

When Jack is told he has to become a Champion to save the unicorn, he balks. “But I know nothing of weapons!” One of the film’s delicious morsels is watching him evade ingestion by swamp creature Meg Mucklebones. He flatters and distracts her with her own image in his shield as he unsheathes his sword and tries to find the courage to use it for the first time. (It’s an even longer morsel in this version – yum! Trek trivia: Mucklebones is played by Robert Picardo – the holographic Doctor in “Voyager.” Now that’s range!) There’s no explanation of Jack’s proficiency with the bow and arrow at film’s end, but we don’t care. He’s already drawn blood, and we know he can do it again.

Lily, trapped alone with Darkness in the deepest levels of his lair, faints when he reveals himself. (Again, one of the primo moments of cinema for me is watching Curry step out of the 20-foot mirror.) She wakes up as he swoops in for a kiss. In the extended version, Darkness has already proposed just “taking” her, adding more menace to the moment. She scoots away, rightly terrified, and has just moments to form a survival plan.

Scott, in his commentary, refers to what follows – her talking with Darkness over one seriously creepy dinner table – as Lily’s “manipulation” of the demon. In fact, Scott insists that Lily manipulates more and more throughout the film – that this is evidence of her “evil.” And yet in the beginning of the movie, we see her whine and wheedle free food out of a forest family and a kiss out of Jack – in the midst of her “lily” white innocence. Now that she’s forced to outsmart a ruthless killer to save her life, as well as the rest of the world, she’s manipulating. Right.

Lily knows the only thing she has in her favor is Darkness’s desire for her. This means he’s already placed his pride and his hopes in her hands. When any of us – men included – receive that kind of power over someone else – freely given – we have no choice about its being given. We do choose what to do next. Lily didn’t take this power from Darkness. He gave it to her. The only important question now: how does she use it? She undoes her mistake. She frees the unicorn.

I would go further. I would argue that the world of classical fairie, where Scott has consciously set his tale, is much more complex than ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ (He was gleeful about Gump actor David Bennent’s German accent because it would remind audiences of the Grimm tales’ Black Forest origins – alas, never heard in the end, every line overdubbed at the request of an exec who couldn’t tolerate “Nazis in Fairyland.”) Gump’s original entrance, cut from the U.S. release, reappears here – as a death threat. He and his cute little woodland sprites show up only after the sudden winter rages, and they blame Jack. Jack first has to solve a riddle in exchange for his life before Gump and the others take him on the adventure. Fate is fickle, and temperament even more so.

In the end, I suppose it doesn’t really matter to the viewer what the filmmakers or critics have to say about a movie they love. We love it because it speaks to us, and “Legend” continues to speak to me – about the shades of darkness we all need to survive the cruelties of the world.

And I don’t mean black cats.