Blegh blegh blegh.
Some straight talk. Last week wasn't a very good week for me. I hit a whole lot of down spots, turned some self-loathing on myself for extended periods of time, and basically wasn't in a good mood for the vast majority of the week. I'm doing a little better now, but the fact is that I missed Friday's review entirely. This is, in a way, my fault. I totally had time to do it Friday, but I opted not to because I'd spent most of the day in a negative haze, and decided once I came out of it that spending as much time with the comic book club as possible was better than spending a little time, then coming home to be by myself and write the review. I got some comics to read, went to see Age of Ultron again, had fun with friends, felt better.
Now, I could have gotten around to the review Saturday, or maybe even Sunday if I was really pushing it, but I just don't feel like talking about this one. My uncle watching Danger Mouse pulled up a bunch of shitty children's films on his account, and I rolled up Star Wars: The Clone Wars from it. You know, the one that was the first four episodes of the TV show strung together in a movie and then released to theaters because someone really wanted to make money off of it. The movie barely made an impression on me when I first saw it seven years ago, and it barely made an impression now. It's just the pilot to a show I never got into and couldn't stick with before it got good (though I understand that when it did get good, it got REALLY good). I'm normally not one to shirk from a review - hell, I gave Transformers and Melancholia a chance, didn't I? - but after a week of general downness, I just didn't feel like talking about it.
And I still don't. I'm not in any kind of mood today to just faff about and go "Eh, s'alrgith, nothing special," and I don't want to take any gambles with Netflix and see if anything decent comes up. So, instead, we're breaking formula to talk about a movie I'm actually interested in talking about, 1973's Fantastic Planet. I grabbed it out of the school library last week, and it was really good, so we're gonna take a swing at it. So here goes.
(Fair warning, I might do this again Wednesday for Beasts of the Southern Wild. Or maybe we'll go back to formula. Who knows.)
Anyways, Fantastic Planet is an animated film from the mind of French director René Laloux. A former psychiatric care worker, he got his start in animation by helping the inmates create their own short film as part of their therapy. The early influences of non-neurotypical thinking on his work really shows in Fantastic Planet, which doesn't look like any kind of conventional animated film, even for a sci-fi picture. Every aspect of the landscape, the creatures, the Traag culture, all of it looks and feels completely and utterly alien. Seriously, just look at the trailer. There's some real creativity at work here, and I think it's a great example of how animation and science fiction can expand our horizons of what's possible.
The animation style, too, is pretty damned unique. There's a bit of sketchiness to it, but not in any way that looks cheap or rushed like many of Disney's films of the same era. Instead, the cutout stop-motion lends the movie a slower pace that compliments the narrative, and a bit of an off-kilter aesthetic, one that adds to the alien sensibilities. I don't want to say it's "dreamlike" because pretty much everyone and their mother says movies like these are "dreamlike," but it's most definitely fascinating to watch.
Speaking of the narrative, there's nothing too terribly groundbreaking about it, but it's told in a fairly captivating style. In the distant future, Earth is largely uninhabitable, and most humans (now called Oms, a play on the French word for man) live on the planet Ygam as either pests or pets to the much larger blue-skinned Traags. Traag science and culture is far in advance of anything we ever had on Earth, much less as the largely disenfranchised Oms - they're focused largely on the art of meditation and contemplation on the universe. However, the increase in popularity of Oms as pets, as well as a rise in wild Om incursions into Traag territory, threatens their way of life in the eyes of the elders. As such, the total extermination of the Oms is frequently on Traag lips.
The whole story is told by taking us through the life of Terr, an Om boy whose mother was killed while he was a baby, and was adopted by the young Traag girl Tiva. Again, I wouldn't call any of the narrative new or groundbreaking - if you're at all familiar with these kind of sci-fi stories, the whole "human beings as pets slowly being abandoned by their owner and striking it on their own for a better chance at life" thing is well-worn. But it's well-worn for a reason, and Fantastic Planet's slow pace and unique feel give it enough time to develop as its own story without feeling cliché. I can recognize the common story in retrospect, but in the moment I'm completely caught up.
Tropes might get annoying at times, but if we didn't have 'em we'd be starting from scratch every time we tried to tell a story, and wouldn't ever get to the point where we need innovation.
I don't want to go giving the impression that Fantastic Planet is bad because the story isn't the most innovative, though. There's some great thematic stuff going on regarding whether or not humanity can ever hope to achieve real peace with a higher alien power, or if the only compromise is through a show of force. Given the movie's Czechoslovakian animation team, I've seen some people claim it's an extended metaphor for Czech occupation by the Soviets. While there are mitigating factors that prove this isn't the intention (work on the film taking place mostly before the invasion started and the book it's based on well predating the occupation), it's always nice to see a sci-fi story with enough universality to it become applicable to real world events. Good to have meat along with the potatoes every now and then, you know?
(Yeah, I know I'm haphazardly using metaphors, what are YOU gonna do about it?)
I really liked Fantastic Planet. If I didn't, I would've rolled up a movie for tonight instead of tossing this blog's whole gimmick out the window in order to talk about it. It's definitely a slow-burner, but it's one of those few movies where I feel compelled to pay attention to every second. The soundtrack makes for some great studying music as I found out the other day. And dammit, it's just a plain fun ride to go through. The movie isn't on any of the streaming services as far as I'm aware, but it's definitely worth tracking it down and checking it out for yourself.
(Assorted thoughts:
- The version I watched was entirely in French with English subtitles. That might have played a roll in why I felt the need to pay attention the whole way through, but I like to think it would hold up even in the English dub.
- Speaking of the version I watched, it calls the aliens Traags, while most other translations and dubs apparently use Draag. The original book calls them Traags too, but I'm only going with Traag because it's what I saw it as.
- I'm still trying to work out what the hell that weird lava lamp bit with the four Traags is. It's clearly not meditation, and based on what we see in the movie adult Traags don't have much time or patience for recreation, so I'm not sure what function it serves. But it certainly enhances the "this ain't Earth, buddy" aspect of the movie.
- Ygam's landscapes are some of my favorite backgrounds in an animated feature, now.)
For the record, I am doing better than I was earlier. Last week just kinda hit me like a trainwreck.
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