Creatures of the Night was back in full flow the weekend of 12th April, with the start-up of a loyalty card bringing the sci-fi great and good out of their time machines to watch Fantastic Planet, the Cannes prize winning animation.
The audience was transported to the savage planet of Ygam. A world where forty to one hundred foot (estimates vary) blue humanoid giants with crustacean ears lord it over a race of humans ‘Om’s’ – It’s a French joke. The Om’s use their human cunning to break free of their oppressors, eventually founding a civilisation on an artificial planetoid called the Fantastic Planet.
This film waves the brave flag of European animation. There’s not much of it, at least compared to the States (Disney) and Japan (Anime). Fantastic Planet puts up a good fight against these animation juggernauts. I have never seen animation quite like this; it’s as if Philip K. Dick and Hieronymus Bosch had a talented baby together and this is their artistic achievement. This is an important film for animation buffs. Instead of the traditional animation technique of drawing on acetate, the creators of this French-Czech film sketched on cut-out and hinged paper. This lends laborious rigour to the film, conveying a sense of epic struggle and Bible like fable. Animation of this length is a real labour of creative love, and every few seconds there is something – a shadow or an object – which is different, interesting, and the product of an engaging artist.
Adapted by Rene Laloux from Stefan Wul’s Ome En Serie – a sci-fi novel written during the quiet times at his dentist surgery – Fantastic Planet offers the best of sci-fi animation; it even stood up to a re-watch in the cold light of Sunday morning. Part of the films charm comes from its inventiveness. The landscape, and the creatures that inhabit it, really are fantastic. The backdrop is spikey, phallic and hostile. Shades of red are laid out under an ominous grey sky. Monsters abound, ranging from strange little silk weavers, to armless T-rex’s used for gladiatorial combat. The animation is less frantic than Disney or Anime, and is special for it. The picture slides over panoramic stillness of human emotion, the overarching theme of this film.
The film opens with a bare breasted (don’t worry, it’s tasteful) female Om running for her life. She is clutching a baby – turns out he’s the protagonist – and appears terrified. The cause of her distress becomes apparent when a huge blue hand crashes down and flicks her. A few flicks later and she dies. A kind hearted Draag –that’s the 40/100 foot blue giants – takes pity on the baby and raises him as a pet, calling him Terre (it’s another French joke). She controls Terre by means of a space-age collar which drags him back to her whenever she chooses. The Draag gets so attached to Terre that she starts taking him to her lessons; information he later uses to get one up on her race.
As the plot unfolds Terre escapes, shedding his collar with the help of a beautiful savage Om – again bare breasted. Terre quickly becomes an important figure in the Big Tree Tribe, who has settled in a little used park. The tribe is sworn enemies with the Hollow Log Bandits, a tribe of rival Oms who inhabit another section of the park. The tribes are united, however, against the Dragg threat, which comes in the form of a deOminisation. The Om’s are gassed by cannon like robots in a genocide which is as evocative as it is matter of fact.
Despite this, we are not led to see the Om’s as total victims. Moments before the deOminisation the Om’s kill a hippogriff like creature which strays too close to their tree. The killing is reminiscent of cave paintings which depict a buffalo hunt. As the chief Dragg says “We were wrong to consider Oms as simple harmless animals. I fear we have committed an error fraught with the most grievous consequences.”
Turns out they have, and the Oms fight long and hard enough to set up their own civilisation on a planet in space ‘where they now exist in vast cities.’ The call this planet Terre, as homage to their leader. This gives the mythology of the film a circular sense. Perhaps we are sitting here blissfully unaware of the next Draag invasion.
This epic action is set against a haunting techno score by pianist Alain Goraguer. The music, unfortunately, may remind you of Pizza Express style background tinkles. It would, however, be the most cinematic pizza of your life. The music makes the film surreal as opposed to just plain weird.
This is a film that will stay with the Creatures… audience a long time. I, for one, will be practicing my armless T-Rex fighting and watching the skies for signs of the Draggs. All we can do is remain vigilant.
Creatures of the Night continues at Hyde Park Picture House on Saturdays at 11pm, the films coming up are House (28th April), Dark City (5th May), Mulholland Drive (12th May), Repo Man (19th May), The King of Kong (26th May) and The Evil Dead (2nd June).
Samuel Reeves.