The fanlisting for the animated film Fantastic Planet (La Planète Sauvage) is now CLOSED. Created and designed by Adel of GrungeZombie.net.
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Fantastic Planet (French: La Planète Sauvage, lit. The Savage Planet) an animated 1973 science fiction film directed by René Laloux. The film was an international production between France and Czechoslovakia and has been distributed in the United States by Roger Corman. It won the special jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973. The story is based on the novel, Oms en Série, by the French writer Stefan Wul.
The film depicts a future in which human beings, known as "Oms" (a word play on the French-language word hommes, meaning men), have been brought by the giant Draags to the Draags' home planet (Traag), where they are kept as pets (with collars). The Draags are an alien race which is humanoid in shape but a hundred times larger than humans, with blue skin, fan-like earlobes and huge, protruding eyes. The Draags also live much longer than human beings – one Draag week equals a human year. Some Oms are domesticated as pets, but others run wild, and are periodically exterminated. The Draags' treatment of the Oms is ironically contrasted with their high level of technological and spiritual development.
The film is chiefly noted for its surreal imagery, the work of French writer and artist Roland Topor. The landscape of the planet Traag is full of strange creatures, including a cackling predator which traps small fluttering animals in its cage-like nose, shakes them to death and hurls them to the ground. The Draag practice of meditation, whereby they commune psychically with each other and with different species, is shown in transformations of their shape and colour.
The interaction of science and superstition is most apparent in the Wizard, who resists the knowledge that Terr brings, fearing it will erode the power he maintains. Knowledge trumps ignorance, but in this case only after surviving an attempted assassination. Terr's drive to share knowledge overpowers the fear of an unknown people. Only his courage to save others not of his adopted tribe allows that tribe to overcome the loss of their leader.
The Draags and Oms finally learn to live in peace and mutual benefit; presumably any groups can if they and their leaders really want to. This may have been a theme favoured by the filmmakers as it was made and released during the Cold War (the source novel was written long before this).
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