The Dark Crystal (1982) a review and meditation.

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 When I saw the funeral scene of the dark crystal. With the skeksis master lying on his bed clinging to the scepter that allowed him the position of power. Before he eventually collapsed into dust. And the contrast it had with the mystic passing slowly fading away leaving only the wrinkles of his robes. It meant something to me and later when I read the Jim dodge quote “of two great masters they say one died screaming another serene anticipating death a smile on his face. Another change signifying nothing!” I knew it was, there is a kind of truth… almost as if we are watching a creation myth of an alien world.


The crystal of power is wounded and needs to be healed. The darkness interprets the light it reflects. Tents it with it’s own perspective. And confuses it from what is natural.


The healing of the crystal is a beginning and an end. Much like how scripture is cyclical staring the first Adam and ending with the last one.


More important, is not that we live… but that we did exist. The flaws of trama shape us more than we want to admit. And some of us are so interwoven with trauma it is a lattice for the growth of our identity. We are like the urskeks split by our arogence and trying learn from a a life not ours as if we were our own teachers!


But when the crystal is healed it is at a cost to the gelflings of the film… one dying the other having nothing to lose. The healing of another causing the wounds that drive towards its closure.


What was the film? An imagined world or a mandala for the audience creating a bildungsroman out of their engagement with the film?


Does it matter? As A child something had changed in me from watching this movie. Something was learned and an innocence was lost. But what was gained a sense of self.


Yes, Jen seems dull in his puppeteering (Jim Henson) not knowing how to un-Kermit the frog his performance. No, Kira does not suffer the same fate being one of the more moving performances caught on film.


I refuse to close this review by giving this film a score. The dark crystal much like the crystal of power that is its namesake is flawed and needs healing of sorts… but the healing is to be done by the audience that views it. Clinging to it for balance so that there soul may grow in the cycle of wounds and restoration. Through healing and change may we be restored to what we are capable of. As living creatures trying to understand what there is to be understood.


I am haunted by chamberlain chanting “please! Please make peace!” When that is the very opposite of what he wants. The incongruence of the confession to the intent of what he is doing is the foundation of the darkness.


A stone falls till it hits the earth transcend what? The crystal is wounded until it is healed no matter the cost! 


Peace and love until tomorrow.

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