The opening minutes of the film La Planète Sauvage are among
the most startling and engaging scenes of any film of any genre. A young mother
runs in terror from some unknown threat. This; as she attempts to shield her
infant child from their potential attacker or attackers. She is eventually taunted, herded and
humiliated into submission by something of extreme. The exhausted mother
falters and falls; dead from her brutally abusive physical and psychological torture.
The child will survive to become the film’s protagonist.
Fantastic Planet (as it was titled in America) appeared in theaters
forty plus years ago. This creation from the minds of director René Laloux and
designer Roland Topor has amazed and informed for two generations now and is
still thrilling in concept, storytelling and visually. The hand drawing;
technically good, with a definitive roughness of line and grain is vastly
appealing. It marries the surreal and the fantastic with modernity. Elements of
Fantasy and Science Fiction combined with the strange and haunting score by
composer Alain Goraguer is complete in execution; touching the emotional as
well as the intellectual.
Nothing short of exceptional; Fantastic Planet was
ground-breaking Cinema. The creation of this film was years before the
development of computer generated imagery. Pixar and DreamWorks rule and inform
the world of today’s animation. The dialogue of animation has changed so much
in the digital era. But the hand still ruled in the times that Fantastic Planet
appeared. It is prevalent throughout this marvel. On most levels it holds up into
this era as an entertainment and as history.
I was living in Washington DC when I first saw La Planète
Sauvage. My friends and I had taken a bus across the city from South East to
George Town in North West DC. We had been witness to the most radical film
offered at the time. Had we also been the witness to the brave new future of
cinematic artistry? Standing outside the
theater waiting for our return bus I studied a poster for an upcoming feature.
The art work was interesting but most of the names of the contributors (other
than Ron Howard) were unfamiliar. The name of this feature was American
Graffiti; directed by some guy…George Lucas.
