The planet Ygam is dominated by a hyper-intelligent species known as
the Draag, while humans, known to the Draag as Oms, are mere pets at best and
a pestilence to be eradicated at worst. One such human, Terr, is raised as a pet
before gaining access to the Draag's teaching machines. He then escapes with
the device in order to share his newfound knowledge with the wild Om, but
when the Draag attack, Terr and a handful of survivors must find a way to escape
the Draag menace forever, and they set their sights on Ygam's moon, a savage
world on which waits the Draag's greatest secret.
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With that out of the way, let's get back to the subject at hand.
The psychiatric clinic La Borde opened its doors in the early 50's, near a
small farming town in central France. Built on a radical and experimental
treatment philosophy called institutional psychotherapy, the aim of
the clinic was--and still is--to help patients without alienating them, to give
them a responsible role in running the clinic without forcing bureaucratic
controls on them, and to help them find assistance through group psychotherapy
and working together. For many years, a young man named René Laloux worked at
La Borde, counseling the patients in the art department and encouraging them to
express themselves through group projects. Laloux and the patients worked
primarily with shadow puppets and even broke into local television with a short
called Tic-Tac. Eventually, Laloux and the patients created a more refined animated
short, Les Dents du Dinge, or The Monkey's Teeth, that earned Laloux an Émile Cohl
Award for animation. It was through winning this award that he met a man
named Roland Topor. The son of a naturalist painter, Topor was a
fascinating figure himself, a celebrated surrealist who thought the state of
surrealism had gotten too mainstream by the 1960's, which may or may not have been
the fault of some eccentric Spaniard. Topor was a fan of René Laloux's work,
and the duo began collaborating on the animated shorts Les Temps Mort
and Les Escargot, the latter of which became a massive hit in art circles
across Europe and Asia. After this, in the late 60's and with the help of a few
French film producers from Les Films Armorial whose names I'm not even going
to try to pronounce, Laloux and Topor decided to create a full-length animated
feature based on the science fiction fantasy novel Oms en série by Stefan Wul.
Since there was no infrastructure for animated films in France at the time,
production was moved to Czechoslovakia, where a few animation
studios were in operation and could be hired on the cheap. After delivering most
of the preliminary sketches and ideas for the film, now known as La Planète sauvage,
Topor largely departed the production, leaving it up to Laloux and the Czechs to
do most of the work. The film was animated unconventionally.
Instead of the cel animation techniques popularized by Disney and other major
studios, Laloux opted to work with hand-drawn cutouts and stop-motion, a
technique he had used with his previous efforts with Topor and which called
back to the shadow puppetry he did at La Borde. It was a laborious, tedious
process, but not a terribly expensive one. All the production needed was time.
By 1968, things looked good, and the film entered production in earnest, with Laloux
regularly visiting the Czech studio to direct. Unfortunately, as anybody who
knows their Cold War history should be able to tell you, on August 20th, 1968, the
Soviet Union, unhappy with how liberal Czechoslovakia was becoming, invaded
the country and began cracking down on things like free artistic expression and
foreigners with capitalist aims who might exploit the working class.
La Planète sauvage managed to avoid the axe of the Soviet censors, but
production was at a virtual standstill throughout the rest of 1968 through 1969,
1970, and even into 1971, when production was finally able to continue.
For the music, they hired the French jazz pianist Alain Goraguer, who delivered a
psychedelic, funk-infused, synthy prog- rock soundtrack that has since become
almost as famous as the film itself, occasionally popping up on nightclub
track listings, getting sampled by hip-hop artists, and being cited by many
contemporary artists, like the French band Air, as a significant source of inspiration.
La Planète sauvage debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May of 1973--where it
was nominated for numerous awards and won the special prize--before getting a
wide international release in December. In the U.S., it was dubbed into English and
retitled Fantastic Planet, although the French title more directly translates to
"the wild planet." It received a lot of critical praise but only found middling
commercial success. In France, La Planète sauvage only managed to attract
a little over 800,000 admissions, which while not terrible is not a particularly big hit.
For perspective, Walt Disney's animated Robin Hood, which released that same year,
attracted almost seven-and-a-half million admissions. The film has gone on
to be a cult favorite, often appearing in animated film festivals and getting
screened in college film classes and dorm rooms. Indeed, when I was showing
movies to my friends in my dorm room in college, many moons ago, I would have
loved La Planète sauvage. I probably would have showed it as a double feature with
1981's Heavy Metal, a personal favorite at the time. But that doesn't mean
La Planète sauvage should be dismissed as early 70's psychedelia that only
college kids can enjoy. This is a great science-fiction film on its own merits,
chock-full of wildly imaginative ideas and thought-provoking imagery. The world
of Ygam is fascinatingly alien in ways you'd be hard-pressed to show in any
other medium, with a dream logic to proceedings that works due to the total
creative freedom on display. It deals with heady subject matter and can be
interpreted in many interesting ways. It is certainly a commentary on animal
rights, but it can also be read as a treatise on any kind of mass oppression
or genocidal tyranny, through a twisted lens of science-fiction and fantasy.
Don't ask me to explain the ending, though.
Sure, it's a trippy motion picture that will leave you feeling like you might need to
spend some time in La Borde after watching it, but it's also a stunning work
of surrealist cinema that is singularly unique in its style and substance.
Now, this is the point in my video where I'd normally try to put the film into the
context of sci-fi cinema of the time, but La Planète sauvage doesn't really fit
into such a narrative. It is not beholden to any sort of greater context.
Its imagery may have reflected some trends in surrealism; its visual style
may have gone on to be an influence in animation,
especially in relation to a certain British comedy troupe--
"In the frozen land of Nador, they were forced to eat Robin's minstrels,
and there was much rejoicing." "Yay."
--and Oms en série certainly has a place in science-fiction literature, but I like
to think of La Planète sauvage as a cinematic fever dream that exists
out of time and out of place, the kind of thing that could only be created by a man
who learned his craft from mental patients, alongside one of the weirdest
Surrealists to come out of France. La Planète sauvage simply must be seen
to be appreciated.
And that's all for today, my fellow Earthlings. If you like what I'm doing here,
make sure you hit that like button and subscribe to the channel. For more
science-fiction reviews in film and literature, head on over to my website
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helping me out there. Until next time, though, this is The Unapologetic Geek,
telling you to never be ashamed of what you love...
...as long as you're not hurting anybody.