Illusionary Maze



The Illusionary Maze, also known as the Escher Room, is vast, illusionary maze-like chamber and a three-dimensional representation of M. C. Escher's Relativity which was used as a set in the 1986 dark fantasy movie Labyrinth (the Escher estate was given acknowledgment in the credits for the film).

As the stairways in the room lead in every direction, the room completely disorientates and confuses anyone who enters it. There is no clear light source in the room, and nor is there any gravity as Jareth the Goblin King, as well as his "guests" (such as Sarah Williams and her baby half-brother Toby) are all shown to move across vertical stairways and ledges with ease.

As one of Sarah's last challenges within the Labyrinth, she runs throughout this maze trying to catch up to her little brother so she can take him home. The laws of gravity and physics do not apply here. At one moment, little Toby might be crawling across the ceiling, in the next he might be catching a crystal bouncing up a flight of steps.

The Illusionary Maze is where Jareth sings "Within You". The maze itself is a part of his castle.

Trivia

 * In the book Jim Henson: The Works, Jerry Juhl comments on how Jim Henson would get so enthusiastically preoccupied with his work, that certain ideas of his - such as the Escher inspired set - would become submerged for a while: "I was in London in 1985 while Jim was shooting Labyrinth. I walked out onto this giant soundstage and there was this huge set - the M. C. Escher maze used at the climax of the movie. Jim came down from a ladder and I reminded him that we had talked about using an Escher maze in a proposal we had worked on twenty years earlier. He had absolutely no recollection of it. We actually went back and found the treatment, but he still didn't remember. That was so typical of Jim. He always said that he didn't have a good memory, but in fact he always hung on to useful ideas until they were needed."

- Jerry Juhl, Jim Henson: The Works.