The Fantastic Planet

Director: René Laloux René Laloux

Overview

A French/Czech co-production, the dream-like La Planete Sauvage concerns the degradation of the Oms, human-like creatures on the futuristic planet Yagam. The Oms are kept as pets and beasts of burden by the Draggs, 39-foot beings who comprise Yagam's ruling class. The status quo is upset when Terr, one of the Oms, accidentally receives an education, whereupon he organizes the other Oms to demand equality with the Draggs. Based on Stefen Wul's novel Ems En Serie, Fantastic Planet was the winner of a 1973 Cannes Film Festival grand prize.

Product Details

Release Date:	06/21/2016
UPC:	0715515179119
Original Release:	1973
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[Wide Screen, Color]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Time:	1:12:00
Sales rank:	9,332

Special Features

Les temps morts (1965) and Les escargots (1966), two early short filsm by director René Laloux and illustrator Roland Topor; Laloux sauvage, a 2009 documentary on Laloux; Episode of the French television program Italiques from 1974 about Topor's work; Interview with Topor from 1973; Trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Mark Gruner	Actor
Nora Heflin	Actor
Marvin Miller	Voice Only
Hal Smith	Actor
Olan Soule	Voice Only
Janet Waldo	Actor
Monika Ramirez	Actor
Barry Bostwick	Terror

Technical Credits

René Laloux

Steve Hayes

Roland Topor

René Laloux	Director,Screenwriter
Boris Baromykin	Cinematographer
Jindrick Barta	Animator
Zdena Bartova	Animator
Simon Damiani	Producer
Anatole Dauman	Producer
Dick Elliott	Editor
Alain Goraguer	Score Composer
Rich Harrison	Editor
Steve Hayes	Screenwriter
Josef Kabrt	Animator,Art Director
Lubomir Rejthar	Cinematographer
Bohumil Sedja	Animator
Zdenek Sob	Animator
Karel Strebl	Animator
Roland Topor	Production Designer,Screenwriter
Andre Valio-Cavaglione	Producer
Josef Vanan	Animator
Jiri Vokoum	Animator

Editorial Reviews

Rarely has a titular adjective so accurately captured the experience of watching a movie as in Fantastic Planet. The film's alternate universe is both totally an element of fantasy, and fantastic in its vernacular sense: an absolute marvel to behold. Rene Laloux's animated French-language allegory takes trippiness to new levels of pure imagination, conjuring a planet where humans are both domesticated pet and outlaw nuisance to the native rulers. These rulers, the skyscraper-sized Traags, are blue humanoids with red eyes and vaguely aquatic features -- but who otherwise are pretty genial, intellectual beings. It's no coincidence we're supposed to see ourselves in them, but Fantastic Planet is no mere plea for us to trade places with the Earth creatures we so callously enslave and kill. Masterfully, Laloux's film also invites us to identify with the humans, whose spirit of determination inspires them to an against-all-odds uprising. But however many ways Fantastic Planet invites reflection, it's at least as interested in wowing its audiences with otherworldly technology, flora and fauna. The film pauses to flesh these out through atmospheric vignettes, featuring tall plants that whip the air aimlessly, intricate groves of multi-colored trees, small bulbous-eyed creatures that make clothing by foaming bubbles from their mouths, or giant winged beasts that scream in frightening bursts. (The sound design is a discussion in and of itself, consisting of excellently 1970s computerized beeps and boops, plus a soundtrack that could accompany a porn movie from that era, without that being the least bit silly). The Traags are a fully realized entity both familiar and unsettlingly foreign -- when their meditations carry them skyward in enclose bubbles, it's breathtaking. The one complaint is that the spell is broken slightly by the dispassionate and largely unnecessary narration of the lead character, reflecting on events after the fact, which tends to distance us from the bizarre immediacy of the story. Fantastic Planet is showing us so much, it doesn't need to tell us anything.

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