Wednesday 4 October 2006

The Fantastic Planet (1973)

This Czech-French animated classic is now available on DVD and really deserves to be better known as it was one of the first films with a SciFi slant intended for an adult audience.  Nowadays we look to anime for this, but this movie is an important forerunner.  Set in a world dominated by huge blue creatures called Draags who keep tiny human-like beings called Oms as pets, the wild oms in the surrounding parkland are considered vermin to be periodically culled.  We follow once such om, Terr, who is treated like a doll but who manages to learn (by transfer direct to the brain) as his mistress learns.  When she loses interest in him as a teenager, he escapes dragging a learning device with him.  With this he manages to educate the wild oms and to lead them, initially into rebellion, but then into a fragile peace.

The animation is very much of its period and has a psychodelic feel like "The Yellow Submarine" and the Gilliam cartoons for Monty Python, creating fabulous landscapes and creatures in a fantastic world.  Seek out the DVD which I am sure you will find of unusual interest; it also contains two rather super shorts which are more than worth your time.

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