Fantastic Planet

'La Planète sauvage' is a 1973 cutout stop motion science fiction allegorical film directed by René Laloux, The story is based on the novel Oms en série, by the French writer Stefan Wul. It comes under the guise of a children's film, yet is really intended towards the older counterculture.

The film depicts a dystopian future in which human beings, known as 'Oms' (from the French word hommes, meaning men), are creatures on the blue alien species; Traags' home planet. The Traags are humanoid  but a hundred times larger than humans and they live much longer. Each Traag week is equivalent to a human year. The Traags also bleed blue blood, and have no physical distinctions between males and females. Although some Oms are domesticated as pets, they are seen as pests and are periodically exterminated. The Traggs debate whether the Oms are in any way intelligent or civilised. They treat them as inferior.The plot is linear and easy to follow, so although it is surreal it still has an understandable narrative and is not completely abstract. The surreal world draws the viewer into its own inner logic. Narration is supplied by the protagonist, Terr, as in retrospect he describes his existence as part of the Traag family, and afterwards when he escapes. This tends to act as a device to answer any questions the audience may have that are not answered in the visuals or plot structure.

The film is chiefly noted for its surreal imagery. The landscape of the fantastic planet is full of strange creatures, which are chiefly irrelevant to the plot, but are used in the mise-en-scene to add another degree of fantasy and outlandishness to the feel of the world. Metamorphosis is shown in the Traag practise of meditation, whereby they transform their shape and colour, and levitate in the air in spheres. Terr's life passes by through condensation, we see him at various stages of adolescence within the first half of the film. Sound is used to great effect, with a lot of attention paid to the strange clicking, humming whistling noises made my the alien species. Symbolism is shown in the creatures and plants, which evoke images of make and female sexual organs. The score is oddly paced and jaunted, which fits the narrative very well. It is used as a mood setting rather than a device to forward the narrative. There is not much play between light and dark, which I think is something that could have added well to the mood. I want to use contrasting illumination in my animated piece as a method of penetration and expressing visually the characters' moods.

The entire film feels like it could be a metaphor with a moral message. I would go as far as to call it 'Political' out of Richard Taylor's genre categories, though it is also a literary adaptation according to Wells. While the Traag council continues to think of revenge on the Oms towards the end of the movie, it is proposed that the two species finally create peace between each other. This could be allegorical an allegorical theme relating to the Cold War, when the film was made and published.