Meeting Your Leaders

Truth can sometimes be found in the most unlikely of places, in a children’s film, a comic book, a video game. The Dark Crystal is the 1982 Jim Henson film that introduces us to the world of Thra, its inhabitants, the native Gelfling, and its usurpers, the Skeksis. It is achingly beautiful and chillingly familiar. Not really a children’s film or maybe what children’s films used to be, unsanitized stories that had messages and told the truth about about life, even the darker parts. The story goes that the idea for the Dark Crystal came to Jim Henson when looking at an illustration made by Leonard Lubin for Lewis Carroll’s “The Pig-Tale”, depicting two “fancy crocodiles”, one bathing and one toweling off in a Victorian bathroom. Crocodiles. A few years later, Henson met Brian Froud and the two decided to partner to bring the world of the Dark Crystal to life, with Wendy Midener (Froud) joining as creature design supervisor for the Gelfling. The Frouds, Brian and Wendy, of course are famed for their fairy-themed world-building and an entire post or more could easily be dedicated to their work.

In the opening sequence, we find that 1000 “trine” ago, the heart of Thra, the Crystal, cracked, a shard went missing, strife began. Once a green and thriving planet, Thra is now a dying planet ruled by a dying race. Interlopers here, the Skeksis have taken a hold of Thra and the Crystal, putting it to their own dark purposes. The Skeksis are astonishingly and explicitly vile. Simultaneously bird- and lizard-like, they resemble extravagantly dressed raptors, vultures in layers of ruffles and decay. They look as if they reek of rotting opulence. Ruling from their crystal castle, they pass their days and nights gorging themselves on the flesh of creatures (some still alive), hissing at each other, and jockeying for power. Most egregiously, they use the Crystal to drain the life essence of Podlings, bottling it and drinking it to rejuvenate themselves. Primordial predators, they are the embodiment of violation. 

They were not always this way. When they arrived on Thra, they were the urSkeks, a more balanced albeit still perhaps problematic group of beings who were exiled from their homeworld. For a time, they tried to aid the native species in their own way, guiding their development and providing them with science and technology. Ever intent on returning home, things went awry when they tried to purge themselves of their darker natures using the Crystal. Due to the fear and anger that was still within them, instead of being purged they fractured into the cruel Skeksis and gentle Mystics.

In the time that has elapsed since the breaking of the Crystal and the appearance of the Skeksis, they have genocided the Gruenaks, enslaved the Podlings (scenes of Podling village raids are especially disturbing), and subjugated the Gelfling. Their methods include sowing division among them as well as introducing a system of tithing. At the point when the film takes place, the Gelfling have been brought to the edge of extinction; the Skeksis have gotten wind of a prophecy foretelling the end of the Skeksis through the healing of the Crystal by a Gelfling hand. To prevent their own demise, the Skeksis dispatched the Garthim to hunt down and eliminate all Gelfling. Unbeknownst to the Skeksis, two remain: Kira and Jen.

When we meet Jen he is at the side of his caretaker, the wisest of the Mystics. Like countless Gelfling, Jen’s parents have been killed by the Garthim, and Jen has been raised by the Mystics. Now dying, Jen’s master relates to him his mission, he is to find the missing shard and heal the Crystal before the conjunction of the Three Suns. How is he to do this? He is all alone. As Jen asks, so too do I ask how Jen is to do this. He is delicate, naïve, innocent. His fine elfin features and dream-like, simple way of speaking underscore this. As Jen asks himself this, I ask myself how I am to go it alone.

Some time into his journey, we find that Jen is not in fact alone. In an unfamiliar lush forest landscape, he
encounters Kira. Kira is as exotic and precious, but light where Jen is dark, optimistic and effervescent
when he is timid and doubtful. She is a buoy and she is relief, the glimmer of hope we need to accomplish
the things we must do. Soon after we meet Kira, the Dark Crystal gifts us with what is one of the best

sequences I’ve seen in a film. Kira shows Jen how to dreamfast. And I have the thought that this sharing of experiences and feelings is how it is supposed to be, is something we once had but lost somewhere along the way. And I understand what it is that is ailing us today. We have been cut off from each other when, in a world ruled by Skeksis, with a multitude of seemingly insurmountable obstacles facing us, what we need most is each other. We need connection.

It's at 4:18, here: