The Four Rules of Magic

The Four Rules of Magic

I have seen two movies recently that dealt with magic. Night at the Museum and Pan’s Labyrinth are surprisingly similar movies despite their strikingly superficial differences. Both films portray the profound effect that magic and belief in that magic can have on the actions and outcomes of a person’s life, but what’s more surprising is that the way in which they establish their magical worlds through the use identical rules of magic. In the end, what separates the two films is the different level of fidelity they pay to worlds that they’ve created.

The films’ premises are almost identical, but their pitches couldn’t be more different; the main characters of both movies are transformed through their introduction to a magical world that others aren’t privy to. In Night at the Museum Ben Stiller's character Larry Daley becomes a night watchman at a museum where the subjects of study come to life, from the giant skeleton of the tyrannosaurus rex who wants to play fetch right down to the miniature figurines in the dioramas of American Western and ancient Roman life who are constantly at war with one another. Life in the museum is an unlikely community of various and often times threatening constituents. In Pan’s Labyrinth a little girl, Ofelia, and her pregnant mother move to a small town where the pregnant mother’s new husband, Captain Vidal, is trying to exterminate the guerillas in the surrounding countryside. Ofelia stumbles upon an ancient labyrinth where she discovers that she is the lost princess from a magical kingdom, and that to return to her kingdom she must complete three tasks assigned her by an ancient and powerful faun.

Despite the similarity of their themes, Night at the Museum fails almost completely at conveying a believable use of magic, because instead of scrupulously creating a world in which the fantastic can take place, Night at the Museum relies heavily on special effects to inspire the sense of wonder, suspense and rapture that movies like Pan’s Labyrinth and to a greater degree Spirited Away conjure through the judicious combination of script, editing, directing and special effects. To contrast, in Pan’s Labyrinth there is no shortage of special effects, but where Night at the Museum begins to create, but fails to complete, a believable magic world, Pan’s Labyrinth follows through on its promise by establishing and maintaining a consistent set of rules by which the magic functions.

Magic without rules is merely wish fulfillment. Magic with rules is mythology. Mythology in no way denies the wish fulfillment aspect of magic, but accentuates the cost of failure to follow its rules. Orpheus' wish is granted: he may bring Eurydice back from the dead, but he may not turn around to look at her or she will return to the land of the dead. Cinderella may go to the ball as a princess, but only until midnight. Icarus may fly, but not too close to the sun. At one extreme, magic is merely metaphor, the clever embodiment of the fears or aspirations of the characters. Buffy the Vampire Slayer seasons one through three are excellent examples of magic at its metaphorical best. At the other magic is merely a novelty.

Special effects has had an effect on this group of stories, from Harryhausen to the Wachowski Brothers, often what they do in the movies they seem to do because they can; but books like Alice in Wonderland I feel also fall into this category, written without real merit as stories themselves, but certainly enjoyable to experience nonetheless. The best stories combine the novelty of something completely new with the metaphor of something accomplished in a vision that, for even the briefest of moments, pierces the sack-cloth veil that separates our mundane world from that mysterious world beyond our comprehension and left our lives a little bit brightened, if not marginally enlightened.

Pan’s Labyrinth, does exactly that by adhering closely the rules of magic. It moves fluidly through magic’s different forms, fusing its story solidly with top of the line graphics and a solid, well-told story, so that the magic we remember is one part of a fantastic and moving journey through the world of a little girl. The first rule of magic is that not everyone can see it. The second is that we are unsure of its rules, thereby putting control of the situation in the magic’s hands.

A good example of magic that we cannot understand is horror movies. Freddy, Jason and all varieties of zombies are excellent illustrations of magic that we cannot understand and are therefore terrorized by. All of them, at their hearts, are powered by magic, but in horror films magic is a power that has gone astray, contravening the natural forces of life for a negative, and usually deadly, purpose. Rarely does this kind of magic have a singular goal, making it more frightening because it cannot be compensated, it cannot be bargained or reasoned with. It is merely representative of a dark and insatiable hunger, which can only be avoided or contained, but never truly destroyed, as sequel after degenerating sequel has taught us. This kind of magic is the most difficult to maintain an interest in; the specific manifestations of these undying evils maintain their novelty for only a short time before becoming clichés.

The faun in Pan’s Labyrinth represents this kind of magic; the source of his power is unrevealed, the limits of his powers are unknown, his goals are unclear, and his methods are dubious. But unlike the bloodthirsty maniacs of horror films, Guillermo del Toro has decided to have this power hold its hunger in check, sharpening what would otherwise be horror into suspense, and adding another note to an already complex and satisfying melody.

The third rule of magic is that there is always something to be done and a certain way to do it. These tasks have certain nonsensical rules attached to them, but they must be followed despite that, because when they are disobeyed bad things happen, as Ofelia discovers when she eats the fruit of the underworld and wakes the blind beast. Which underscores the last rule of magic: there is always a price. It is what makes magical solutions so tenuous, so fraught and happy endings so insincere. Orpheus watches his love fade away; Cinderella must flee the prince; Icarus falls to his death; and Ofelia is nearly eaten by the monster she awakens.

Night at the Museum begins along the same mythological path that Pan’s Labyrinth seems to stride so effortlessly; it’s first basic magical tenant is that the museum’s exhibits only come alive at night, when no one but the night watchmen is there to witness the spectacle. Its second rule is that Daley is unsure of why or how the exhibits come to life. All he knows is that due to the pharaoh’s tablet in the Egyptian wing everything comes to life, and because everything comes to life he must, as the night watchman, protect them from escaping because if they’re caught in daylight they’ll turn to dust. Invoking rule three, he is given a list of instructions to follow to ensure that this will not happen, but through carelessness the instructions are lost, and therefore can’t be followed. Because he loses the instructions that have been entrusted to him Larry Daley learns rule four, the price of magic, watching one of the cavemen he’s sworn to protect disintegrate in the light of the rising sun. From here the story is simple: the rising action of the film should be Daley's ability to effectively protect the museum’s helpless denizens without the instructions, the climax being when things get terribly out of control he will through his own ingenuity, understanding and hard work pull through in the nick of time.

Sadly this is not the case in Night at the Museum, which is what makes it so interesting and so frustrating. It’s so similar to Pan’s Labyrinth in its initial construction, but one seemingly small change to its foundation sends the movie reeling off into irrelevance. Instead of keeping things simple, which is always a good idea in stories involving magic, the writers decided that saving the unruly museum tenants from sunlight wasn’t enough, and that Larry Daley would also have to rescue the magical Egyptian tablet as well, since it turns out that the former night watchmen who trained Daley plan on stealing it.

This plot complication completely changes the focus of the movie, undoing all four of the rules of magic as Daley is forced to protect his charges from the internal threat of their own chaotic natures as well as from the external threat of the loss of their livelihood. This kind of conflicting motivation is the stuff of high tragedy and high comedy; Caesar's empire is being torn apart by rival factions in the senate while barbarians threaten its borders; Lucy’s got to make a dinner for 10 and learn the steps to a new dance number in Ricky’s show. Obviously when done well this kind of pressure results in higher stakes and therefore a bigger payoff, but Night at the Museumdoesn’t do it well. In the shuffle of the climax the focus falls on retrieval of the tablet, and the caretaking of the magical museum people is an afterthought, resolved with a tidy piece of deus ex machina that fails completely to fulfill the promise of the four rules of magic, leaving the audience unfulfilled and making the movie’s only real magic cheap slight of hand.

Both Pan’s Labyrinth and Night at the Museum prove that the best use of magic in literature and film is always limited and costly. The best use of magic by creators shows the discipline that magic requires, and the dangerous consequences that magic without discipline has. Magic without limits represents unlimited power, a set of circumstances which is initially thrilling, but quickly boring; Superman’s ultimate flaw is that he has no flaws, he is nothing short of a god on Earth, making him a far less compelling character than Batman, who is painfully mortal, and whose power has come at a costly price. The best example of magic in fiction is Ursula K. LeGuin’s original Earthsea trilogy, where magic is hard-won, scarcely used when other methods are available, and whose price is great. The understanding of the proper use of magic is what ultimately separates Night at the Museum from Pan’s Labyrinth. Larry Daley never really pays for what he takes, he never really works for what he earns. Much like the Magician’s Apprentice his magical misadventures are wacky, but never truly dangerous, and so his triumph is hollow and ultimately unsatisfying. Ofelia, on the other hand, understands the danger of her situation, so that the price she pays for her escape is no more than would be expected of any other great magician. And like all other great magicians, from Merlin to Gandalf to Potter, her road is not happy, but it is satisfying to watch her walk it.