n the planet Ygam, a race of detached, intellectual blue giants called Traags live in abstracted peace. They spend much of their time meditating, sending their consciousnesses sailing over their planet's surface in colorful bubbles. They merge and distort their bodies in a ritual called "Imagination." They acquire their race's collected knowledge through a mental induction device, ensuring that even their young children quickly become remote geniuses. Their world contains cruel predators, but little seems to touch the aloof Traags.
As a society, their only enduring problem seems to be the presence of a race they call Oms, a species of tiny pink-skinned bipeds brought back to Ygam as pets after a trip to a planet called Terra. Oms have a tendency to escape and breed in the wild at an alarming rate, and they steal food and destroy property. Frequent "de-Oming" runs are necessary to keep the population down, and some Traags debate the wisdom of keeping Oms as pets at all--back on Terra, they show signs of organized life, and it's possible they may even be intelligent.
One Om, a boy named Terr, proves the point by escaping his owner and bringing a knowledge-induction device to the wild Oms of a local park. As they learn to read Traag language and use Traag technology, their society begins to change and mature from a near-Neanderthal tribal state into a more cohesive group that might actually challenge the Traags. But the Traags, appalled at the Oms' increasing numbers, are considering wiping out the entire species once and for all.
Striking art, hidden defiance
French animator René LaLoux' first feature film, produced in Prague's Jiri Trnka Studios, is widely regarded as a metaphor for the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. The story is based on Stefan Wul's novel Oms En Serie (Oms By the Dozen), but the symbolism of a powerful technological culture subduing a (literally) smaller one, then thoughtlessly underestimating and abusing its people, is clearly nonspecific enough to apply to almost any situation of political inequity. As an act of political defiance, it's fairly vague, though considering its broad call for mass education and overthrowing the ruling class, it's surprising the Communists allowed it to be produced at all. (It was a struggle; the film eventually had to be completed with French financing.)
As pure art, Fantastic Planet is visually stunning, but lethargic and emotionally distanced. The animation--paper cutouts moving over painted backdrops--is reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's concurrent Monty Python work in style and depth. Heavy crosshatched shadows, muted colors, and lovingly detailed artistic design give the images a complex, weighty three-dimensionality. The imaginative wildlife and the Traags' society of psychedelic introspection seem like nods to 1968's Yellow Submarine and the art of the '60s drug-culture underground in general.
There are a few notable flaws in this production--the light blue subtitles are sometimes impossible to read, and the sluggish, though thoughtful, pacing is occasionally aggravating. But the intelligence, talent and care that went into producing this film are unmistakable, and doubtless these, rather than its political message, were what led Fantastic Planet to win the Special Grand Prize at Cannes in 1973.
