Moments with a unicorn
Today something brought me back to a movie that I had not thought of in many years. It's strange how that goes, when you find something in a hidden corner or something that was in plain sight for a long time and you just never thought to look in that cranny or see it for what it is or isn't. Today on Netflix I decided to give The Dark Crystal a looksee, since the last time I saw it was probably twenty some years ago. I had just done a Star Wars marathon of the first and middle trilogies the week before, it's funny to see how the older movies like the middle trilogy as well as The Dark Crystal are considered "dirty movies" now. Not dirty in the fact that they are X rated, but that technology did not exist as it does today with computer graphics programs, animation was still drawn and recorded somewhat by hand, and every creature was a puppet on wires or by remote control, or in some extreme situations it would have to be a little person dressed up in a costume to make them look like they are really in action. Hence the dirtiness that made a certain charm to the production when you know it's just a guy in a rubber mask.
After watching The Dark Crystal and doing some research on the much anticipated but canceled sequel in the last few years, I did some more searching that lead to another path of popular culture from that same era. While I was a very little kid during that time and not 100% aware of how to become more in tune with fads and trends, the best and only means I had to go on was movies. During a period in the early 1980s, there was a spike in the popularity of fantasy films (hence The Dark Crystal and another fantasy Jim Henson production, Labrynth) and fantasy animation (The Hobbit in cartoon form long before the Lord of the Rings epics of the 2000s). Along the way was another animated fantasy movie called The Last Unicorn, written by Peter S. Beagle and considered one of the greatest fantasy novels in history. Unfortunately for this animated movie, it had a modest showing at the box office and isn't exactly remembered on the same level as other, more successful ones of the fantasy cannon. Something lead me down this path again to this movie, and I thought I would give it another viewing since I could not remember the last time I saw it. This is a tale about, just as the title suggests, the last unicorn. Two hunters are on horseback in a forest that is in eternal summertime, one hunter says it is because this forest is inhabited by a unicorn whose magic presence allows for the forest to remain in summer. As they leave the forest, the hunter shouts to the forest that if there is a unicorn here in the forest to be mindful because she is the last one there is. The Unicorn hears this, and decides once a butterfly tells her that a creature called the Red Bull has driven all the unicorns away that she should find out if she is, in fact, the last unicorn in the world. Adventures allow her to join forces with a bumbling magician named Shmendrick and a serving wench named Molly, they travel to a distant land where King Haggard has gotten the Red Bull to drive all of the existing unicorns into the sea. While being chased by the bull, Shmendrick turns her into a human woman, much to the Unicorn's hate that she feels this mortal body dying all around her.
From this point on, however, I was not expecting to feel something else. Rather, I believe at the time I was not mature enough to realize some of the things that were being said. The adopted son of the king, Prince Lir, of course, is in love with the Unicorn as a woman. As a human, the Lady Amalthea (as the Unicorn is known to others) soon asks Molly who she is and why she is here, because she is forgetting who or what she was before they got here. Molly reminds her, of course. Now that I'm a woman, everything is strange. Now that I'm a woman, everything has changed. How true that is. I am not a child anymore, I am a woman and everything has changed and it's all so strange. Soon Prince Lir learns that she is not a woman at all but a unicorn, she says she was struggling with the want and need for mortal love and wants to marry the prince, but he says no, she should not be with him. He's a hero, and heroes know if and when something is right to do, and he was not to love her. When she turns back into a unicorn and frees the others from the ocean (sorry for that spoiler for those who have not read the book or seen the movie), she remembers the prince. Before she leaves to return to her forest, she tells Shmendrick that she has learned what mortal love is and what it is to regret, which is now why she will never be the same again. Years later, Beagle wrote a sequel to this story after many years of being begged to do so, called Two Hearts. Everyone wanted to know what happened to the prince and the unicorn, if they ever would meet again. And they will meet again, when the aged Lir once again appears to slay a griffin. Lir is no match for the griffin, and Lir would die, but not before the Unicorn reappears and remembers him.
This got to me today, I cried when I heard these songs and when I saw this story unfold again. Why? I guess the answer is because it's what they said in the story: you're a woman now and everything is different. And some things can never be, just because. You're not one of the world, you're the last one who is alone and having the adventures that others are too afraid to have without you. There is still magic in the world, maybe not in the form of a mythical creature but of a person hopeful. Don't forget, have hope that maybe you're not one of them and you can have all those mortal things that you wished you could be.
After watching The Dark Crystal and doing some research on the much anticipated but canceled sequel in the last few years, I did some more searching that lead to another path of popular culture from that same era. While I was a very little kid during that time and not 100% aware of how to become more in tune with fads and trends, the best and only means I had to go on was movies. During a period in the early 1980s, there was a spike in the popularity of fantasy films (hence The Dark Crystal and another fantasy Jim Henson production, Labrynth) and fantasy animation (The Hobbit in cartoon form long before the Lord of the Rings epics of the 2000s). Along the way was another animated fantasy movie called The Last Unicorn, written by Peter S. Beagle and considered one of the greatest fantasy novels in history. Unfortunately for this animated movie, it had a modest showing at the box office and isn't exactly remembered on the same level as other, more successful ones of the fantasy cannon. Something lead me down this path again to this movie, and I thought I would give it another viewing since I could not remember the last time I saw it. This is a tale about, just as the title suggests, the last unicorn. Two hunters are on horseback in a forest that is in eternal summertime, one hunter says it is because this forest is inhabited by a unicorn whose magic presence allows for the forest to remain in summer. As they leave the forest, the hunter shouts to the forest that if there is a unicorn here in the forest to be mindful because she is the last one there is. The Unicorn hears this, and decides once a butterfly tells her that a creature called the Red Bull has driven all the unicorns away that she should find out if she is, in fact, the last unicorn in the world. Adventures allow her to join forces with a bumbling magician named Shmendrick and a serving wench named Molly, they travel to a distant land where King Haggard has gotten the Red Bull to drive all of the existing unicorns into the sea. While being chased by the bull, Shmendrick turns her into a human woman, much to the Unicorn's hate that she feels this mortal body dying all around her.
From this point on, however, I was not expecting to feel something else. Rather, I believe at the time I was not mature enough to realize some of the things that were being said. The adopted son of the king, Prince Lir, of course, is in love with the Unicorn as a woman. As a human, the Lady Amalthea (as the Unicorn is known to others) soon asks Molly who she is and why she is here, because she is forgetting who or what she was before they got here. Molly reminds her, of course. Now that I'm a woman, everything is strange. Now that I'm a woman, everything has changed. How true that is. I am not a child anymore, I am a woman and everything has changed and it's all so strange. Soon Prince Lir learns that she is not a woman at all but a unicorn, she says she was struggling with the want and need for mortal love and wants to marry the prince, but he says no, she should not be with him. He's a hero, and heroes know if and when something is right to do, and he was not to love her. When she turns back into a unicorn and frees the others from the ocean (sorry for that spoiler for those who have not read the book or seen the movie), she remembers the prince. Before she leaves to return to her forest, she tells Shmendrick that she has learned what mortal love is and what it is to regret, which is now why she will never be the same again. Years later, Beagle wrote a sequel to this story after many years of being begged to do so, called Two Hearts. Everyone wanted to know what happened to the prince and the unicorn, if they ever would meet again. And they will meet again, when the aged Lir once again appears to slay a griffin. Lir is no match for the griffin, and Lir would die, but not before the Unicorn reappears and remembers him.
This got to me today, I cried when I heard these songs and when I saw this story unfold again. Why? I guess the answer is because it's what they said in the story: you're a woman now and everything is different. And some things can never be, just because. You're not one of the world, you're the last one who is alone and having the adventures that others are too afraid to have without you. There is still magic in the world, maybe not in the form of a mythical creature but of a person hopeful. Don't forget, have hope that maybe you're not one of them and you can have all those mortal things that you wished you could be.
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