Help the young adult and his friends escape from the maze....
In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was constructed by Daedalus for King Minos of Crete and designed to hold the Minotaur, a half man, half bull creature, which was fed human sacrifice. Each year Minos demanded that Athens send him a tribute of seven young men and seven maidens to honour him and thus avert going to war. Each year the delegation was sacrificed to the beast until Theseus faced, and defeated, the Minotaur in the King's Labyrinth. Daedalus had constructed the maze with such cunning that he himself was barely able to find the way out and, having killed the Minotaur, Theseus was only able to escape because he could retrace his steps using Ariadne's thread, literally a "clew", or "clue".
I bloody loved the story of Theseus as a small child. It was my favourite and I read this book over and over again.
But as an adult it poses an interesting problem. Scholars agree that the Minotaur was held in the centre of a labyrinth. But a labyrinth is not the same as a maze. A labyrinth is a unicursal path, a winding straight line. The route is secure. It may seem to be chaotic at times but there is always one clear path to follow. In short, you cannot get lost in a labyrinth. How the hell then did Daedalus the so-called "master designer" struggle to find his way out? Why didn't the Minotaur just walk out? And how come Theseus was such a thicko that he needed a thread to find his way out. Idiots! the lot of them.
Anyway, that is why I was never allowed back into the Classical Studies classroom.
But we have learned that a labyrinth is not the same as a maze.
This is a labyrinth
This is a maze
In a labyrinth, you just have to trust the path, find the centre, not get eaten and then leave.
In a maze you have free will. You have choices, there is no middle area goal to reach and you will almost certainly get lost.
A labyrinth is a contemplative path, as is a maze to a certain extent, but a maze is more about the tension between fate and free will.
The maze in 'The Maze Runner' is an ever shifting maze within a labyrinth. Theseus would have lasted about five minutes in this one. Ariadne's thread would have been fucking useless.
Labyrinths and mazes are found all over the world, and they are important cultural works, giving insight into our history and psyche. Prehistoric labyrinths served as traps for evil spirits or as paths for initiation rites or dances. In Medieval times the labyrinth symbolized the hard path to finding God. Pilgrims to Chartres Cathedral completed their arduous journey by shuffling around on their knees in prayer (possibly whilst being beaten too) following a labyrinth laid out on the floor.
In alchemy and in the Renaissance labyrinths lose their centre. The person in the labyrinth is the centre, a reflection of learned wisdom. Symbolically labyrinths and mazes reveal complexity and simplicity, mystery and design, intuition and received information. Labyrinths and mazes are bloody brilliant!
I am someone who grew up with a love for reading Greek myths, who became obsessed with dungeons and dragons, who lived through the survival horror that was '3D Monster Maze' on the ZX81, who still shudders to think of the number of times that he died in 'Deathtrap Dungeon', who watched The Crystal Maze every week and is someone who can still be found running around computer generated corridors with a blaster in his hand. Mazes have always been a part of my life. And what is the inter-web if not the ultimate maze? What is blogging if not a twisty path of false starts, dead ends and long rambling threads where the writer can't ever seem to get to the bloody point?
So then, what can I say about 'The Maze Runner' without using the phrase "it's 'Lord Of The Flies' meets the 'Hunger Games'". Well it's two of the most entertaining hours I've spent in a cinema this year. There are times when the 12 year old in me just wanted to burst out screaming with excitement because it was that good.
The best thing about books for 'young adults' (as we're calling them now) is that they cut the bullshit, keep you fervently turning the pages to find out what happens next and resonate with those trying to come to terms with all manner of bewildering social structures. It's why grown-ups want to read them too - there's a pace and ease you just don't get in even the best adult "escapism" novels. Most of the young adult novels adapted for the screen are allegories. The dystopian future is already a cliche but a fucked up world already surrounds you when you're 12 years old. Why wouldn't you want to explore that on some philosophical level. What choices to make? What path to follow?
'The Maze Runner' seems to be the purest distillation of the form so far with an idea so simple but so immediately thrilling that it is wonderful.
We are thrown into the action from the very first frame, unable to get our bearings, running for our life, quickly brought down by the first obstacle. It is a tour-de-force opening, probably the best pre-credits sequence this year and indicative of what will follow. This is one of those film that makes you wonder how it passed with a 12A certificate. It's nail biting enough to watch as an adult. It's dark, puzzling and ever threatening. It feels very real.
So you don't know who you are, you don't remember anything at all, but here you are - in an open prison with no guards but also penned in by huge, solid, impenetrable walls. This is the Glade, a green oasis, and you are not alone. There are others here, the same sex and age as you - but just as lost, just as blank. You survive on what you forage. This community only has rules of its own devising, based on a fragile consensus. Every morning a gap in the wall is opened by some unseen force. Beyond is a vast maze. Every night the gap closes. If you are caught inside you are never seen again. There is something that preys on the trapped and every day the maze is different. Is it better to exist in ignorance in the Glade or look for answers in the maze. What would you do?
Come on - that's brilliant - isn't it? I love it. There's little bits of films that are important to me in there - 'King Kong', 'Planet Of The Apes', 'Escape From New York', bits of primal fears like 'Alien' along with a bit of cult movie appeal along the lines of 'The Village', 'Cube', 'Logan's Run' and of course, a great big dollop of the good old 'man-hunts-man' plot along the lines of 'The Most Dangerous Game/Hounds Of Zaroff/The Running Man'. Yeah, well I'm all in with that.
It ticks all the boxes for me - but I didn't expect it to be this good. Like 'Hunger Games' I thought we'd spend an hour getting to the chase, I thought we'd have a love triangle and I thought we'd get lots of Californian, shiny teeth moppets to get annoyed by. Instead it was breathless, gripping and superbly crafted. These teens all have interesting faces, like they've stepped out of a Sergio Leone film instead of central casting. They can act too. Will Poulter, from 'Son Of Rambow' and 'We're The Millers' is outstanding once again. If anything, the blandest of the lot is our hero Dylan O'Brien, but that's fine, he needs to be a cypher anyway. It's very well directed by Wes Ball who doesn't have many credits to his name but this film never feels 'safe' or family friendly. The action is visceral and brutal but best of all - you can see what's going on. No shaky cam, no fast edits, just great choreography and camera movement. There is CGI but it is convincingly done and not overused. The 'Grievers' that patrol the maze are a genuinely scary creation but the maze itself is nightmarish as its walls grind and shift into ever more elaborate traps. At times it's pure cinema in as much as the plot doesn't really matter - there's just a universal appeal in seeing people trying to escape a maze.
The ending should be a problem. By now you should know that the nature of films like this is that they are a franchise and exist only as part of a greater whole. I can rant on about how films should always be self contained and like most people I am bored when a series of books is dragged out into ever more elongated and prolonged sequels. For once though, it felt right to leave wanting more. What is it all about? Other than the obvious themes already touched upon I've really no idea. The film ends by replacing one set of questions with another set of questions. But for once that feels quite fitting. We have come full circle to the starting point.
Socrates describes the labyrinth line of logical argument thus in Plato's Eutydemus:
"
Then it seemed like falling into a labyrinth: we thought we were at the finish, but our way bent round and we found ourselves as it were back at the beginning, and just as far from that which we were seeking at first."
And so there we are, I started out talking Greek mythology and labyrinths and that's where I'm going to exit. In the middle of all this is something like a film review. I liked 'The Maze Runner' a lot and hope it doesn't get lost in the glut of young adult adaptations already out there. Go see it and run your own maze.
