Movies - Fantastic Planet

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	Movies - Fantastic Planet

Fantastic Planet is the English language version of an animated 1973 science fiction film directed by René Laloux. The film was an international production between France and Czechoslovakia and its original title was La Planète Sauvage. It was distributed in the United States by Roger Corman. It won the special jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973.

The film's premise is that human beings, known as "Oms" (a play on the French word "homme" or "man") have been brought by the giant Traags to the Traags' home planet. Some Oms are domesticated as pets, but others run wild in parks, and are periodically exterminated. The Traags' treatment of the Oms is ironically contrasted with their high level of technological and spiritual development. The protagonist, a tame Om who runs away and becomes wild, brings knowledge to his species, and uses it to force a new, equal relationship between the Traags and the Oms.

Synopsis

The story is based on a novel, Oms en Série, by the French writer Stefan Wul. The film depicts a future in which human beings are kept as pets by the Draags, an alien race which is humanoid in shape but ten times larger than human beings, with blue skin, fanlike earlobes and huge, protruding eyes. The Draags also live much longer than human beings - one Draag week equals a human year. The Draags call human beings Oms. The story concerns Terr, a domestic Om who runs away and joins a tribe of wild Oms, which are regarded as vermin by the Draags. Because Terr has imbibed the Draags' knowledge (his child owner liked to have his company during her learning sessions), he is able to help his species become powerful enough to gain recognition from the Draags as intelligent beings, and to negotiate a more equitable way of life.

The film is chiefly noted for its surreal imagery, the work of French writer and artist Roland Topor. The landscape of the Draag planet is full of strange creatures, including a cackling predator which traps small fluttering animals in its cage-like nose, shakes them to death and drops them on 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 Fantastic Planet itself, a natural satellite of the Draag planet where the meditating Draags commune with alien species, is a barren landscape covered in headless statues; when the Draags meditate, bubbles containing their faces are shown leaving the Draag planet and attaching themselves to the statues' necks, whereupon the statues begin to dance.

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Movies - Fantastic Planet

Synopsis

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