Fantastic Planet is a 1973 french film, I stumbled upon it in one of those YouTube rabbit holes, My first impression was from the thumbnail, I mean who wouldn't click on an image with a blue alien with beady eyes holding a miniature human...
This film, although looks simplistic, was able to sell me the idea of outer-worldly surrealism, It doesn't try to force the idea, it just tells it as it is, I think this is because of the narrative flow of the whole piece.
I found it amazing how the creators of this film were able to achieve this with hand-drawn animations... The imagery, soundtrack, and illustrations were able to rhyme together in a cohesive way, even with the limited tools they had at the time. This proves that storytelling is a very important and underrated aspect of film-making even in modern times.
STORYLINE
Fantastic Planet tells the tale of an alien civilization called Draag, The plot starts on the alien planet Ygam(g is silent), It appears the human civilization on earth was on the brink of destruction before they were "saved" and brought to this alien planet to be kept as pets.
It is also fun to note that the humans were called Oms in this world. These little details show how insignificant humans were considered in this world, The typical human POV was overshadowed by this blue giant beings.
The Human were like tiny ants compared to them, The Draags also had this uncanny valley reaction from me. They look humanoid but not quite human, the facial features, red eyes that barely blinked, no eyebrows, etc, all these properties further illustrate the other-worldly vibe. Even though it looked surreal, the coherent theme of the visual storytelling was able to draw me into this universe.
One of the main characters in this film was a human called terr, he was adopted as a pet by a Draag family, we follow the story of Terr, as he grows from adolescence to manhood on this strange planet.
We also discover that being a Draag pet is not all as glamorous as it seems, the life of humans is insignificant to them, the humans are treated as beings of lower intelligence and could be maltreated without any consequence.
The story-line follows the journey of Terr, as he tries to overcome this great challenge towards liberation by escaping captivity.
Another group of characters in this story was the wild humans, they escaped captivity from the Draags and live on the outskirts of Draags society, inside wall crack and underground caverns, These set of humans were considered pests by the Draags, The Draags routinely carries out extermination acts which they call "de-omization" whenever they notice their growing nests.
The Wild Humans had different nests which divided them into separate tribes with clashes and disputes.
The Storyline follows the journey of these wild humans and their fight for liberation, how they overcame their differences and teamed up with our main character TERR.
This is a big part of the whole theme for me, It was able to make me imagine a culture of aliens in a distant galaxy far away.
For example, this film imagines that the Draag education system was simply done by a Draag child wearing a headpiece and simply downloading the information into their brain.
The film also touches on a particular Draag ritual of astral meditation, in which there are able to transmit their minds and visit any point in the universe.
The visual elements and music-scores also aided the alien world expression.
I love the fact that this film was able to sell this idea through visual storytelling without the fancy big-budget CGI in Hollywood nowadays.
The storytelling almost feels like an animated documentary retelling a story of a human civilization lost on an alien planet.
I looked into the history of the film and found out that it won some awards and accolades, It won the Grand prix at the Cannes film festival twice(1973 and 2016) and it's also ranked 36th greatest animated film ever by rolling-stone.
I hope I've been able to spark your interest in it, or maybe there are people that have already watched it but would like a nostalgic trip down their memory lane.
The English-Dubbed version of the movie can actually be found on youtube, I guess because it's an old movie or maybe the uploader has ties with the film, I guess it's under fair-use copyright, because I know YouTube doesn't joke with copyright nowadays.
Thanks for passing by my blog :-)
