FANTASTIC PLANET (LA PLANÈTE SAUVAGE) DVD Review

Few companies can claim to have gone head-to-head with Criterion (and on occasion even beat them at their own game), but Eureka manages time and time again to impress with their "Masters of Cinema" series of DVD releases. Same as with Criterion, these DVD's can almost always be considered blind buys.

Recently they released the science fiction animation movies "Les Maîtres du Temps" and "Gandahar" by French director René Laloux, while last year they released his only other feature "La Planète Sauvage" (released in English-speaking countries as "Fantastic Planet").

The funny thing about these films is this: I had heard of "La Planète Sauvage" from early youth onwards (bits that were shown on television more or less traumatized me as a six-year-old) but even though I developed a rabid taste for both animation and Science Fiction during my adolescence I had never even heard of the other two movies!

So I thought: lets review all three of them, beginning with his first feature "La Planète Sauvage".

The film starts with showing a young woman in rags, trying desperately to defend her baby while being cruelly knocked around by giant blue hands. She dies from her injuries and it turns out the hands belong to giant blue children, who disappointedly state: "She's dead, now we can't play with her anymore".

It's a very cruel, powerful opening and perfectly sets the tone for what's to come. Read on...

Short History Lesson:

In the late fifties and early sixties René Laloux worked in a Psychiatric Hospital where people were being treated for depression. As part of a therapy program he hosted a series of creative workshops about painting and shadow-puppetry, and eventually started making short animation movies with the patients. These used only "simple" techniques like moving paper cutouts but nevertheless a few of these shorts were shown at festivals and even won prizes! It brought Laloux in contact with professional artists like Roland Topor and he started making short movies with them. Several collaborations later Laloux and Topor decided to make a full-length feature based on the science fiction novel "Oms en Série" by Stefan Wul.

That movie became a Czechoslovakian-French co-production where Roland Topor created all the designs, René Laloux did the direction and a team of Czechs led by famed animator Josef Kabrt drew the actual film. It premiered in 1973 as "La Planète Sauvage" (international title: "Fantastic Planet"), and at Cannes it won a special award while also being nominated for the Golden Palm itself.


The Story:

A race of giant blue humanoid aliens called the Draags have visited Earth, a devastated post-apocalyptic world with few traces of civilization left. The Draags do encounter humans though, living as savages, and take some back to their homeworld Ygam. To them, humans are the size of mice and the Draags fail to recognize human intelligence, so they keep humans as pets called Oms (which sounds exactly like "Homme", the French word for "Man").

Some of these Oms escape though, and start breeding in the wild. As the Draag life-cycle is much slower than the human one, soon these wild Oms have reached alarming numbers and become annoying pests. When the wild humans start to steal food, the Draags begin to devise ever more cruel ways to exterminate them like you would vermin.

One human called Terr notices nothing of all that, being the pet Om of a young Draag girl called Tiwa. When Tiwa receives her school lessons telepathically through a walkman-like device, Terr discovers the apparatus works for him too. This enables him (amongst other things) to read the Draag language.

Unsatisfied with his "kept" life Terr escapes into the wilderness, taking one of the learning devices with him. He joins a "wild" Om colony and uses the device to teach his fellow humans how to survive better. When the Draags decide that humans have become dangerous and must be totally exterminated, pets and all, it's a race against time for Terr and his friends to see if they can find a solution which will keep them alive, even if it means having to leave the planet Ygam...


The Movie:

The first thing you'll notice about "La Planète Sauvage" is the very distinct style of its animation. It resembles the shorts Terry Gilliam created for Monty Python but never humorously so, placing the imagery somewhere between the medieval paintings by Hieronymus Bosch and religious icons of the past few centuries. This seems like an odd choice for a science fiction movie but you get used to it fast, and it allows the creators to show the very bizarre landscapes and wildlife of planet Ygam in a relatively cheap way. It looks beautiful too and unlike anything else I've seen as a feature-length movie. Just check the screenshots I've put up here, they speak for themselves.
These visuals are coupled with a very trippy 70's soundtrack, again an idea which seems jarring but actually works wonders together with the images. The combination makes the movie timeless rather than dated.

Scriptwise, the story is told in a leaden seriousness which would damage lesser materials. The mass-gassing of humans evokes memories of the holocaust of course, but Laloux aims a bit higher and targets Mankind's general behavior towards anything it deems inferior to itself.
And it's not just the casual exterminations either. Even the treatment of Terr by Tiwa is revolting to watch, the more so because it is stressed that the girl "really loves her pet". It's a tough love though, because whenever Tiwa gets bored the games she plays with Terr turn into the guileless torture all (unchecked) children seem to be capable of.
As such this endless display of human indignity, suffering and persecution should be far more difficult to watch than it actually is. But there is always something interesting to see on planet Ygam and Terr's adventure story is exciting to watch. The creators obviously didn't cater to anything apart from their own artistic view, and because of that the viewer never really knows what's going to happen next. This film is so far removed from Hollywood that you can't automatically assume a happy ending, and this adds a lot of suspense.

Speaking of the ending: it resolves a bit quickly, in the cinema it must have been blink-and-you've-missed-it. At 72 minutes "La Planète Sauvage" is also rather short, but maybe I should call it "crisp" because I didn't feel at all cheated.

In case you didn't suspect it yet: this is not exactly a children's film. Eureka (or rather the BBFC) rates this DVD "PG" but the film was clearly made with adults in mind. Some Draags wear very revealing outfits while the humans are naked, half-naked or wearing rags. Mating rituals of both humans and Draags are shown, but far more disturbing is the seemingly unending variety in which the tiny humans keep getting eaten, squashed, shredded, poisoned, radiated and stomped on by both Draags and the local flora and fauna.

And it still looks gorgeous!


Conclusion:

This is a beautiful work of art which combines serious sci-fi with fanciful designs, a distinct style and a big message. A classic which is very highly recommended.


About the DVD:

Eureka has released "La Planète Sauvage" on a single regionfree NTSC disc.

Videowise it's a mixed bag. The film is anamorphic but there is lots of combing, and time has not been too kind to the print used: there is some damage. According to Eureka this was the best they could get and I tend to believe them, if only because the recent region-1 release by Accent uses the exact same print.
Colors are subdued. There is a French DVD by Arte Vidéo with far stronger colors and slightly less detail, but the subdued scheme seen on the Eureka fits the overall look of the film being "pencilled" rather than "painted". For what it's worth: the Eureka version's skin tone of the Draags fits those on the DVD-covers of both the Eureka and the Arte Vidéo DVD's, so I guess Eureka got it right.

I've already mentioned the noteworthy soundtrack, and while this disc doesn't stun in the audio department it is as good as I want for a 35-year-old cult movie. Both the original French dub and the English dub are included, and excellent English subtitles are provided. As a nice extra Eureka has put the soundtrack on the disc as well! Saves me buying the CD, and this is the sort of extra I really appreciate.

Speaking of extras...

As usual with Masters of Cinema this release contains an excellent booklet, a 40-pager containing an essay by Craig Keller. While I wished he would provide more of a "making of" and less musings about the concepts explored, his essay still provides you with a wealth of information.
Included on the disc are also some notes but the best extras are another two full short movies by René Laloux!

The two titles are "Les Escargots"(The Snails, 1965) and "Comment Wang-Fo Fut Sauvé" (How Wang-Fo Was Saved, 1987). Both are quite brilliant in their own right.

In "Les Escargots", a farmer tries desperately to get his failing crops to grow. When he discovers that his own tears are the miracle cure his plants need, he is delighted and even invents different ways to keep crying.
Unfortunately, the snails which eat his crops also get a growth spurt and become a civilization-threatening menace to humans.

This is just about the perfect extra on this disc. "Les Escargots" features the same collaborators (bar the Czechs), use of techniques and concepts as "La Planète Sauvage", but is wickedly funny. The print is again combed and somewhat damaged, but it's a little known short movie from 1965 so I'm glad it exists at all.

The other short, "Comment Wang-Fo Fut Sauvé", was made for French television and features a vastly different style compared to the other two movies on this disc. René Laloux was already busy making his "Gandahar" feature-length film at the time with a team of North Korean animators and he used the same people to create this short. By the way, "North Korean" is NOT a typo, the team was actually based in Pyongyang (I will explain later in my "Gandahar" review).
In this film, based on a story by Lafcadio Hearn of "Kwaidan" fame, a painter's apprentice in ancient China explains how his master incurred the wrath of the emperor yet managed to escape torture and death.

René Laloux considered this to be maybe his best work and it is indeed stunning. The artwork is simple yet stylish and complements the story perfectly.

A pity then that the transfer is based on such a poor print! The subtitles are burnt in, two green cables are visible throughout most of the film and while the centre of the screen is pretty sharp the right side seems out of focus, like there was something wrong with the projector. Please, get someone to digitally remaster this!
But of course I have to say the same thing as with "Les Escargots": I'm sure Eureka did their best and if there is not a better version out there I commend Eureka for at least including this one.


All in all a non-perfect but very, very nice disc for a beautiful movie.