At 50, I finally understand the film ‘Labyrinth’

There are films you love when you’re young because they’re magical, and then decades later, there are films you realise you were watching for reasons you really didn’t understand at all.

For me, that film was Labyrinth. I was obsessed with it. Not normal “that’s a good film, I’ll watch it again sometime” obsessed. I watched it so often that I actually wore the video tape out. Yes, video tape. There was a time when watching a film meant putting a large rectangular cassette into a machine, waiting for it to whirr into action and occasionally having to rescue it from the jaws of a malfunctioning VCR.

And I did this so frequently with Labyrinth that I managed to wear the bloody thing out. The thing is though that at the time, I thought I knew WHY I loved it.

Most people, when they’re getting married, probably turn to hairdressing magazines for inspiration for their wedding hair. I turned to Labyrinth. I had fallen completely in love with the ballroom scene, and with Sarah’s luscious locks. So when I was getting married to H, the image I took to the hairdresser wasn’t, as you might expect, a picture torn from a bridal magazine. It was Sarah. I wanted that hair. I even ended up with a few hair extensions in the mix as a result.

Sarah was a teenage girl trapped in a fantastical labyrinth, trying to rescue her baby brother from the Goblin King. There were goblins, magic, impossible staircases, strange creatures, David Bowie in extremely tight trousers and the promise that somewhere inside all this was, eventually, a way out. But when I was younger, I thought Labyrinth was really about something else. I thought it was about the trials and tribulations of finding my Prince Charming.

Not literally, perhaps. But there was something about the fantasy of it: the beautiful, mysterious man, the adventure, danger, the idea that somewhere out there was a great romantic story waiting to happen. I was watching Sarah and, in my younger mind, filing it under the category of girl finds her happy ending. Which is rather funny now.

While Sarah had a labyrinth, goblins and David Bowie as a Goblin King to contend with, I have had something considerably less glamorous. A fitness course I started in 2024 and still haven’t finished it. Let’s get something straight first though, I am not somebody who dislikes exercise. Quite the opposite.

I started it and got stuck into the theory. And, rather impressively, I was hyper-focused on it and completed 80 per cent of it during 2024 and 2025. Which means this isn’t a story about buying a course, forgetting about it and discovering it two years later underneath my pile of gym leggings. I did the bulk of the work fairly consistently, I’d learned the material and made some real progress with good results …. and then I stopped.

This is where the story becomes slightly crazy. I had reached the dreaded video bit. And while practical elements of an exam were always the bits I had excelled at in the past, my body dysmorphia kicked in, along with imposter syndrome, and I just couldn’t bring myself to get over the final hurdle. It wasn’t because I couldn’t do the exercises, I was spending five or six days a week working out at this point. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand what I was supposed to demonstrate because I’d also spent a lot of time training with my hubby in the gym, even helping friends get to grips with the gym machines. The video … that just made me freeze. Reading, learning, making notes, absorbing information. I could do that. Videos were different.

The camera meant I had to show myself doing it. Suddenly the final 20 per cent seemed to possess a psychological significance wildly disproportionate to its actual size. It was no longer: Do some videos. It became: What if I look stupid, get it wrong, what if I’m not good enough? What if I don’t look like somebody who should be doing this? What if people judge me? And so I did what any sensible 50-year-old woman would do. Nothing. I parked the course because this was a course for 20-year-olds, not for someone my age or build or fitness level.

Suddenly Sarah makes a little more sense. She is determined to rescue her baby brother, and I am perfectly capable of helping somebody else through a maze. Sarah throws herself into the labyrinth while I throw myself into other people’s challenges. Sarah gets distracted by the strange world around her. Meanwhile I am distracted by a new idea, a new project, a new class or anything else that suddenly seems much more interesting than the course I need to finish. Sarah wants to understand the rules. I want to understand why my brain can complete 80 per cent of something and then sack off the rest. We are, in our own ways, both making things considerably more complicated than they need to be.

I am very good at beginnings and this may be one of the things I’ve finally admitted to myself. I love beginnings. A new idea arrives and I’m immediately interested and excited about it. There’s nothing better than having a lightbulb moment halfway through a Zumba class. But by the end of the class, I’ve usually forgotten whatever it was.

I bought a lovely new purple notebook to organise my fitness course notes. The beginning was fantastic, neat and orderly, because everything was still possible and I hadn’t reached the tedious bit yet. I hadn’t discovered which sections needed me to concentrate more and I hadn’t reached the point where my motivation dwindled.

The middle was different. The middle is where you have to keep going because there is no longer a novelty buzz attached to the task. And I suspect this is why Sarah’s labyrinth feels so familiar. It wasn’t just about finding the right door, it was about continuing when the excitement had worn off.

Sarah gets distracted. So do I. One of my favourite things about Labyrinth is the number of distractions Sarah encounters. She meets strange characters, sees things that aren’t what they appear to be and follows the wrong route. She gets tempted and has to stop and work out what is actually happening. My version is less cinematic, but I can be happily working on one thing when another idea comes into my head and suddenly that thing seems like the most urgent thing I need to get stuck into. The original thing can wait.

Except two years later, the original thing is still sitting there, my friends are still prodding me and asking if I need their help to finish it, my husband is kindly reminding me about the funds we’ve invested in it, and …. I just feel shame and guilt for not finishing it, but then I find another distraction. My blog … and I get excited about an idea I’ve had about writing a post about self-discovery and the film, Labyrinth. I have to write it IMMEDIATELY. My creative juices are in full flow and that means I have to seize the moment.

It’s useful to understand why novelty, interest and immediate reward can affect my motivation without slapping a label on my forehead. It isn’t useful to turn that into an excuse. My brain may explain some of the pattern, but I’m now sure it’s not going to get to write the ending.

To me, the theory was private, but the video needed me to stand there and demonstrate that I actually knew what I was doing and talking about – and that changed everything. I can be really brave when I’m helping someone else. But when the camera turns towards me, something changes, suddenly I notice myself, my body, my voice. My mistakes. My face. Whether I look competent or just crazy. Whether I look old. The camera doesn’t actually do any of those things. It simply sits there while the rest happens in my head.

One thing I know is that the woman who started the fitness course in 2024 is not the woman finishing it though. I’m not the same woman. The woman I was in 2024 wanted something. She wanted to learn, wanted to develop her fitness knowledge, and most of all, she wanted to complete the course to prove something to herself that she could achieve something outside of her comfort zone.

But since then, I’ve changed, and my relationship with fitness has changed. The question I am asking myself now is not “Why didn’t I finish it?”, it’s “Do I still want to?” That scares me because in this modern world it is assumed that if we have started something, we MUST finish it. Abandoning something means we’ve failed. But there is a difference between giving up because something is difficult and consciously deciding that something no longer belongs in your life. The trick is knowing which one you’re doing.

In my case, I know I still want to finish this one. Which means I can’t blame the woman I was in 2024 for not finding the exit to my maze. I have to decide whether the woman I am now wants to walk through it. This is the part of Labyrinth I understand most now. The maze isn’t static, walls move, rules aren’t static and most things aren’t always what they seem.

And if I didn’t finish it? Well, my brain could turn that into a character assessment. “There you go again, you never finish anything. You get excited and then lose interest. You should have done this ages ago”. That voice is not helpful or accurate.

The evidence doesn’t support it, because I completed 80 per cent of the theory. I helped two other people complete their courses. I continue to exercise, to learn and start new and exciting things. Perhaps the problem isn’t that I can’t finish, it is that I put far too much emotional weight on getting to the exit.

Sarah doesn’t get through the labyrinth alone. She meets Hoggle, Ludo and Sir Didymus. They’re an odd little group, but they’re also useful. And I think there’s something rather lovely about that. We often talk about achievement as though it’s a solo act. I did it or I overcame it. But sometimes in the gym, somebody helps you and you help somebody else. Sometimes you learn something about yourself by helping another person do what you can’t yet do yourself. That’s what happened with those two fitness courses.

I could help them finish, and without realising it, I was rehearsing for my own, I just hadn’t noticed. And this is where watching Labyrinth at 50 feels completely different from watching it as a young girl. There is a moment when Sarah finally understands something fundamental. She has spent the film trying to get through a world designed to confuse her. She’s been distracted, manipulated, tempted, and she’s been made to doubt herself.

Eventually she says the words: “You have no power over me.”

I have heard that line countless times. But I don’t think I ever REALLY heard it until now. Because at 50, I can think of plenty of things in my own life that have felt as though they had power over me. Not a Goblin King, or David Bowie obviously, but fear can have power. Self-consciousness can have power and the fear of getting something wrong can have power. The feeling that you’re behind can have power, along with the voice that tells you everyone else is doing life better can have power.

And so can the stories you tell yourself about what you are capable of, that’s why the line has landed differently now. That’s what Sarah understands. The labyrinth doesn’t suddenly disappear, she doesn’t become perfect. She just stops allowing the thing in front of her to determine what she believes about herself.

At 50, that feels less like a line from a fantasy film and more like a very useful sentence. I want to understand myself and that’s different. If I know that I struggle with the middle of long projects, I can make the middle easier. If I know that being filmed makes me uncomfortable, I can break the filming into tiny steps. If I know novelty keeps me interested, I can use that as a superpower rather than constantly fighting it. None of this needs me to become a different person, it just requires me to work with the person I actually am.

I haven’t finished the course yet. But I think I finally understand why the final 20 per cent became such an obstacle. It wasn’t really the course, it was what finishing represented. Being seen and being finished. Having to admit that I was capable of doing the thing I’d spent two years avoiding. I’m going to finish the videos, not because I owe my 2024 self a certificate. I don’t.

I’ve not finally transformed into some sort of hyper-disciplined woman. I’m still me. I just want to finish something I started because I still want what’s waiting on the other side. I’ll press record before I have time to overthink it and I’ll remember that the woman in front of the camera doesn’t need to be perfect. She just needs to be there.

Perhaps that’s why I watched Labyrinth over and over again as a girl. Maybe some part of me recognised the story before I had the vocabulary for it. I thought I was watching Sarah look for her happy ending. Instead, I was watching a woman learn that she had more power than she realised. And now, at 50, I’m finally catching up with her. The Goblin King can wait, I’ve got a video to record.