MovieChat Forums > Labyrinth (1986) Discussion > In a nutshell , why the door puzzle was ...

In a nutshell , why the door puzzle was a 'non-puzzle', fooling those

posted 8 years ago by Picnic10
11 replies | jump to latest

thinking themselves clever from a previous situation.

When that puzzle is usually given (ie before Labyrinth) it's given by an OBJECTIVE narrator e.g 'You find 2 doors..'

In Labyrinth , the 'puzzle' is instead given by a SUBJECTIVE thing - one of the doors.

Now, unlike the original form of the puzzle , it has become a non-puzzle because the original door might always lie or sometimes lie or never lie and so might the other door NO MATTER WHAT ONE OF THE DOORS CLAIMED SUPPOSEDLY 'in advance'. It'd still be a non-puzzle even if Tweedledum and Tweedledee were in front of the doors. The character supposedly setting the 'puzzle' would not be an OBJECTIVE narrator .

There can be no 'in advance' with a subjective character in true/false terms, unless an objective narrator lays down the ground rules.

Furthermore , (not that she does but) it's not necessarily a good idea to try to best guess the truth based on the surface character of the doors , e.g from their mannerisms. Particularly since possibly everything in the Labyrinth is an extension of Jareth himself. It's one giant crystal ball.

Your best course of action is to either go through neither door or to open one with far more trepidation than she does. Unless you trust Jareth to bring you to no physical harm no matter what you do, just as a nightmare doesn't truly harm you, aside from psychological worry that may have caused you to have the nightmare in the first place and which is then perpetuated by having had a nightmare.

This accidental, or more likely deliberate (Terry Jones is clever to attack presumption of logic) 'non-puzzle' , in disguise of a classic puzzle, will have made fools of many 'maths people' if only they knew or allowed it.

[–] Dobbsyisonfire 8 years ago

I remember someone, I believe it was Jones, saying on TV that the whole "puzzle" scene, was a joke/mess. There was no logic to it. Sarah was in no Way correct in her outcome, as it wasn't a "solvable" puzzle in the first place.

[–] Picnic10 8 years ago

Yet people still think it was what face value suggests it imitates, a Lewis Carroll puzzle. Jones is cleverer than that.

[–] Weber4278 8 years ago

No Sarah solved it correctly, its really not that difficult to solve once you understand the trick is NOT to discover which door is telling the truth.

The trick is to ask a door what the other door would say.

If you asked the liar what the truthfull door would say, he would lie

If you asked the truthful door what the liar would say, he would truthfully give you the lie

So either way you'd get the lie by default....that's the trick.

[–] holtor 8 years ago

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091369/board/nest/241164760?d=253450473#253450473

[–] Picnic10 8 years ago

When someone tells you that there's a puzzle with certain rules, and that your job is deduction, how do you know that the 'rules' themselves (of something 'always' happening, no matter which door is which ) exist? On just someone's (a character's) say so? That could be naive, foolhardy madness ! With this totally common sense and logical doubt in mind, there are potentially no such rules, therefore potentially no puzzle , just a series of events in which the ego was seduced in to thinking it had some logical power over. If you proceed as if there is a puzzle , that's your lookout but potentially you might as well have heard some gobbledygook attached to 'choose an ominous looking door' from EITHER door as to all the objective truth that can be known as to whether those door rules actually exist.

If I came up to you in the street with a friend of mine and said what was said in the film, why would you believe the 'preliminary rules' of one or even both of us ALWAYS lying or ALWAYS telling the truth exist? Is it somehow necessarily different when it's old guys in a Jim Henson fantasy film?

[–] Weber4278 8 years ago

I wasn't ignoring your post, I feel you're over-thinking it, its not rocket science its a riddle in a fantasy story. The matter of who lies and who tells the truth is only suppose to apply to the riddle, not the instructions. Don't ask me why...this is how fairy tale logic works .

It is a classic theme of fairy tales...the hero on a quest always comes across riddles and puzzels that need to be solved before they can advance further. They are usually to teach a lesson, in Sarah's case she solved the riddle but missed the lesson about not taking things for granted...hence she falls down when she says "this is a piece of cake" , she failed the lesson not because of her intelligence but because of her arrogance.

Even Brian Henson in the making-of feature on the DVD said Sarah solved the riddle correctly, so yeah it isn't an unsolvable riddle.

[–] Picnic10 8 years ago

If a door truly ALWAYS tells the truth or ALWAYS lies then that goes for EVERYTHING the door says, instructions included. If it's not clever enough to know whether or not such 'exceptions' mean that it doesn't actually always tell the truth or always lie then the rules can be voided anyway as far as Sarah should necessarily rely on because where and why's the division between 'puzzle set up discourse' and 'any other discourse'?

This is my point - if there isn't an objective narrator stating such 'rules' are in fact true then anything goes.

Whether Labyrinth intended this utter twist on what would be perceived by most people , it is there regardless. I hope you are sticking with your view out of understandable though not correct common view ignorance of what's on the screen rather than misplaced snobbery about what Jones, (Oxford educated, as was Lewis Carroll) may have successfully attempted. To, Monty Python-like, create arguments over what was assumed from similar looking literary basis rather than what was on the screen.

Tell me, if a man tells you a 'rule' about himself or anyone else , why do you take that as an objective rule that always happens?

[–] Weber4278 8 years ago

Why are you being so rude? 

You arrogant dolt - you've fallen in to the same trap excusable in a 14 year old.

You are the one acting like a 14 year old by resorting to name calling

I was simply giving you my opinion on the matter, I wasn't trying to offend you...if you can't take other peoples opinions without resorting to name calling, then you shouldn't post.

[–] Picnic10 8 years ago

Sorry for the insult. I appreciate you responding but tell me an example where else in literature there was a precedent for 'fairy tale logic' to allow a character to say something as logically taut about the rules of a riddle that involves their own nature as what Labyrinth says without a narrator being involved for it to be taken as gospel rules.

Labyrinth is fairytale-like and also Alice in Wonderland like, itself a kind of fairytale although Alice has a seasoning of Gulliver's Travels I feel whereas Labyrinth doesn't aim for satire in any place. We just disagree about what our interpretation should be, if only a single interpretation should be made according to the filmmakers' intention and execution of that sequence. If it's overthinking, that means that the scene was accidentally annoying to mathematicians /philosophers who (hopefully) get paid or popularity from overthinking. Easier to get paid for it.

Best wishes.

[–] Weber4278 8 years ago

Its ok, no hard feelings 

Let me just say that I'm really not disagreeing with you...in a real world setting, yeah I agree it wouldn't make much sense.

I guess I'm just viewing it all through the lense of a fairy tale where nothing really makes much sense anyway, hence my term 'fairy tale logic'...where you can have guards with two heads, old men with hats that can speak, and dogs can walk around in Elizabethan costume, etc. So if the guard with two heads says 'these are the rules to the riddle' I guess I never questioned it that much, especially when solving riddles is such a part of fairy tale tradition.

But since Sarah ended up in the obliette anyway, I will concede...that you could always take the viewpoint that 'nothing is what it seems' in the Labyrinth and Sarah had to learn not to take things for granted so she might have ended up in the Obliette regardless of which door she chose.

[–] hurricanehorton 8 years ago

It's perhaps a logical inconsistency, but I think people blow this slightly out of proportion.

One can assume that the explanation of the rules is the one and only exception to the 'one always lies' and one 'always tells the truth' rule.

I know the scene wasn't necessarily written very well, and that perhaps they should've found a way for a third person to explain the puzzle independently of the doors. But the intention of the film makers was for the puzzle to exist in the way it was presented, so we can just assume that one door always tells the truth and the other one always lies with the exception of when they are explaining the rules to you.

Doesn't really spoil the film in any way, if you just assume it this way.