Simian Circle Games

 

Here’s another movie recommendation for you, Ladyhawke. If you’ve never seen it, that’s too bad because it’s pretty great. It was part of the upsurge in fantasy movies in the 1980s. Conan the Barbarian really kicked it off with a classic sword-and-sorcery tale of revenge. We got pretty much the same with The Beastmaster. And Krull, which deserves its own post, was traditional good vs. evil. But what set Ladyhawke apart for me was the nature of its quest, one driven by love and hope. In this case, Rutger Hauer as a noble knight seeking to undo a curse set by an evil bishop who was jealous of the love between Hauer’s character and Michelle Pfiefer’s. The curse is ingenious, btw. It condemns the lovers to opposite lives. She is a hawk by day and woman by night. He is a man by day and wolf by night. They’ll never be together. It’s got great tension and good plot pacing, and it doesn’t rely too much on fantasy conventions at the cost of involvement in the story. Add in Matthew Broderick as a thief seeking redemption and a rockin’ 80s synthesizer soundtrack. It definitely made an impression on me and is a good reminder that quests are only as interesting as the reason for undertaking them and that character motivations drive the best stories.