FILM / I Can Feel This Body Dying All Around Me: Maiden, Mother, Crone Figures in The Last Unicorn (1982) / Shari Caplin
Image © Rankin/Bass Productions | Topcraft
While it may look like the movie equivalent of a sparkly children’s tutu to the uninitiated, The Last Unicorn (1982), based on the book by Peter S. Beagle and animated by Topcraft via Rankin & Bass, is timeless in the same way as any good fairy tale. Like fairy tales, The Last Unicorn was originally intended for adults, billed as a musical fantasy adventure when it debuted (Slashfilm.com). I first encountered the film when I was four or five, intoxicated by the unicorn’s wet purple eyes, melodic, aching voice (Mia Farrow), and elegant pride. The visual language of symbols - from the hulking, flaming Red Bull who emerges from his own sun to drive unicorns into the sea, to the hundreds of unicorns foaming atop enormous ocean waves, to the eyes of a princess which contain a magic wood – became intrinsic to my core visual language. The bittersweetness of the music and the story itself resonated with my dramatic, baby poet heart. Topcraft animators went on to form Studio Ghibli, so if you are familiar with Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, or their other work, you will have some sense of the way The Last Unicorn resonates for all ages.
Returning to The Last Unicorn with my three-year-old daughter this year, I found that my love of it has not dimmed; my relationship to its symbolism and characters has evolved. I have a new appreciation of the themes it deals in, from the meta about myth-making and fate, to ecology and humanity’s role in the death of species, uses of power, sight vs. blindness, and eternal life vs. mortality. Most potent for me at this stage of my life is the representations of femininity through the maiden, mother, crone figures of The Unicorn/Lady Amalthea, Molly Grue, and Mommy Fortuna/The Harpy. To be clear, I’m thinking of these archetypes as intrinsic within all of us, regardless of where we identify on the gender spectrum.
Unicorns and virginal maidens have become synonymous. In medieval European tales featuring unicorns, virgins were used as lures, either for the unicorn’s desire or as a mirror of the unicorn’s purity (JSTOR Daily). Putting aside the emphasis on sexual activity that the word has come to carry, the virgin archetype can be viewed as one complete on their own (etymologically, the Greek and Latin origins of the word could mean simply “not attached to a man” or even “self-fertilizing”). While the unicorn’s beauty and magic draw us to her, I would venture it is actually her innate, quiet power, her sovereignty that speaks most to children, for there is nothing a (well-loved) child wants more than independence, freedom, a challenge to overcome on their own. The Unicorn is the Hero of this “Hero’s Journey,” to refer to Joseph Campbell’s definition.
While the unicorn is singular within her forest, she cares about her species; the action begins when two hunters passing through her woods debate whether a “last unicorn” lives in this ever-spring forest or if they have truly all died out. The Unicorn learns that the others have been chased into the sea by The Red Bull at the behest of King Haggard (Christopher Lee) and sets off to find them, leaving her forest for the first time. A single leaf falls as she steps onto the path, showing how quickly decay comes without her replenishing magic.
Along her journey, The Unicorn picks up a dithering magician, Schmendrick (Alan Arkin), and a curmudgeonly cook, Molly Grue (Tammy Grimes). After a near-disastrous encounter with The Red Bull, Schmendrick manages to transform the unicorn into a young woman, whom he christens Lady Amalthea. Amalthea, in Greek myth, is a maiden foster-mother for Zeus, who either is the keeper of a goat or the goat herself, whose milk nourishes the god. Visually, the transformation into Lady Amalthea references The Birth of Venus and Lady Godiva, connecting thematically to the ocean (where the unicorns have been trapped) and to a heroic woman famous for riding a white horse through town. There’s something so poignant about the maiden and the unicorn being one and the same.
As a girl, I was both enchanted and devastated to see the unicorn become a beautiful princess with flowing white hair and a star on her forehead where her horn used to be. To follow the Clarissa Pinkola Estès school of thought, the story of her womanhood is the story of her losing her power and forgetting what she wants. As a unicorn, she set off prideful and undaunted to save her species, but as a woman, she haunts balconies and stares at the sea, unable to remember why she’s dejected or who she is. Pursued by a clueless but sweet prince, she moves from complete self-sufficiency to acquiescing to a romance. Raised on fairy tales and born a romantic, I craved that kind of beauty, the depth of her melancholy, her aloofness which I didn’t understand (and still can’t find in myself). Perhaps part of me already craved the surrender of wildness, of my own raw power, for safety and acceptance, for temporary relief from the immensity of my own passions. This is the trade that is made for being hidden from the blind bull; her immortality, healing powers, and perfection (wholeness) for a fragmented, sad beauty in a body she “[feels] dying all around [her],” but a body which the prince and his father will allow into their castle. We feel her loss in the tender song “Now That I’m a Woman,” written by Jimmy Webb and sung imperfectly but with searching fragility by Mia Farrow. “Once… I was innocent and wise and full of pain,” she sings, reminding me of the clear inner knowing of childhood. Now that she’s a woman, “everything is strange.” Such is the state of maidenhood. I also think her journey can be a powerful allegory for gender dysphoria; she finds herself in the wrong body and starts to forget who she truly is because of how others perceive her.
In the book, Schmendrick tells her towards the end, “Whatever can die is beautiful—more beautiful than a unicorn,” (149). At this stage of life, I want to learn how to agree with him. In my post-baby body and smile lines, with everyone in the household (including the cat) coming to me for snacks and petting, I relate most to Molly Grue, the cook with the heart of a dreamer and hair “the color of dead grass,” (76). Though her brood is a group of unruly men rather than her own progeny, she’s not unlike the image of the new mother with unwashed hair and stains on her shirt. Tammy Grimes’ gravely, cigarette-rasped voice conveys a life lived hard. Like Farrow, she seems on the brink of tears at any moment (her sorrow comes out in pummeling whoever is nearest). Personally, I have never cried more openly than once I became a mother. I want my daughter to see the hurt when it happens; I used to clamp shut under bitterness until I could no longer keep it in. I want to soften, even if it means I look messy.
When Molly meets The Unicorn, she laments, she sobs, she rails against The Unicorn. Molly rues her for appearing now that she is no longer an ingenue, now that her face is lined and her skirts are torn. This moment has always made me ache, though I didn’t understand it in the palpable way I do now. In the book, there’s a refrain, “What’s gone is gone.” Molly missed her chance and it hurts too much to be faced with a unicorn now. To return to the Pinkola Estès line of thought, Molly may be mourning not only the loss of what beauty she possessed, but also the power of youthful possibility. Maid Marian was her ideal, and still is, though running off with Captain Cully and his men turned out to be far from romantic.
In his first real act of magic, Schmendrick creates an illusion of Robin Hood and his gang, and Molly literally chases after the illusory ideal of femininity. In contrast to the willowy, ethereal Amalthea, she’s drawn more in the style of the Rankin & Bass hobbits, with plump cheeks, a bulbous nose, and wild hair tangling like branches. Molly Grue softens after her outburst and becomes the heart that keeps the group together as they become entangled in King Haggard’s castle, unsure of their quest. She discovers the way to The Red Bull’s keep through her relationship to the kitchen cat who she has befriended. While she is a thorny truth-teller, she gets to the heart of things and her caretaking is vital to the fulfilment of their quest to save the unicorns. The alluring maiden she is not, but by the end, Molly Grue has gotten to live the life of adventure she always knew she was meant for, paired up with a magician to wander the world, which has had its unicorns restored thanks in part to her caretaking.
If there is anyone who represents a radical disregard for physical beauty, it is Mommy Fortuna (Angela Lansbury), producer of the Midnight Carnival, who uses her witchery to create illusions and, when she can, to imprison true mystical creatures. Mommy Fortuna’s face is as craggy and rough as the tree stump she wears for a witch hat. Mommy Fortuna was likely never concerned with appearances much, knowing how easily they can be manipulated and warped. Since illusion is her trick, she could easily hide her true form under a hologram of Venus, but she heartily embraces old age and even death. Boisterous and quick to laugh, she’s unashamed of herself, boastful of her power. She’s an unconventional crone, wizened and selfish but powerful in the clarity that comes with age. I have always been afraid of her in the way that thrills, that means you want to move closer, to become what scares you.
No great witch, Mommy Fortuna has ended up peddling “cheap circus tricks” to those most eager to believe. She has not forgotten the true magic though, and knows the Unicorn immediately (whereas her audience needs a fake horn in order to see a real unicorn). Her final test to herself is to keep a Harpy imprisoned. A liminal creature representative of feminine rage and destruction, the Harpy, Celaeno, drawn as a vulture with three pendulous breasts, is the other side of the same magic as the unicorn, as vicious and hungering as the unicorn is gentle and serene. “We are sisters, you and I,” the Harpy intones to the Unicorn, who tells Mommy Fortuna to release them both, for “[Mommy Fortuna’s] death sits in that cage.” She knows it.
The sequence of Mommy Fortuna’s end is animated to put us literally face to face with death. We inhabit the camera, looking down on Mommy Fortuna with her arms open to embrace her gruesome end, a gleeful smile on her face. As a child, the witch’s delight in her own demise terrified me and burned itself into my mind. Her joyful acceptance of her fate seemed perverse. Now, I find it admirable, poetic. I look forward to returning to the film in another twenty years to see how close I’ve come to matching Mommy’s radical acceptance of death.
If you have not seen The Last Unicorn because you thought it was for children or because of some other silly deterrent, I urge you to give it a try. If you haven’t watched it since you were a child, I implore you to experience it again. With one of the best casts of any film (I haven’t even mentioned Jeff Bridges or Rene Auberjonois!), beautiful animation, gorgeous folk-y songs, and a timeless story, it is truly a gem.
My daughter dashes down the hallway, tossing her mane and neighing. She wants me to play the farmer who sees the unicorn on her journey and tries to capture her, unable to see her horn and innate magic; when I gesture towards her, cooing, “Here, pretty mare,” she erupts, “A horse am I?! Is that what you take me for? A horse indeed!” and gallops away. She reminds me that no matter the state of my beauty or body, what makes me magical is something most cannot see.
Shari Caplan (she/her) is an actor, artist, event producer, and the poet behind “Exhibitionist” (Lily Poetry Review Books, Paul Nemser Prize Winner, 2024), “The Red Shoes; a phantasmagoric ballet on paper” (Lambhouse Books, Sept 2023) and 'Advice from a Siren’ (Dancing Girl Press, 2016). She's interested in the intersections of art forms, particularly between poetry, film, and performance. Find her work, workshops, monthly love letter to creative endeavor, and upcoming events at ShariCaplan.com.
