‘Planet’ Remains a Surreal Nightmare

A mother, clutching her baby boy, runs in terror over a desert waste. Out of nowhere a gigantic blue hand reaches down and playfully tweaks the woman several times, casually killing her. It picks up her bawling child and as, it begins to caress the child, we discover that the hand belongs to a red-eyed blue-skinned android who is 39 feet tall and is called a Draag.

Thus begins “Fantastic Planet,” a disquieting, eerie and vastly imaginative 1973 Franco-Czechoslovakian animated allegory that returns to the Nuart today for a one-week run. This Special Grand Prize winner at Cannes is being shown in a new 35-millimeter print.

The Draags inhabit the planet Ygam, where they have made pets of humans, whom they consider animals. Called Oms, they were brought from a distant planet that has been destroyed.

Oms are regarded by the Draags as rather like mice: creatures who possess minimal intelligence and who multiply rapidly. It’s all right to have them in the house as long as they behave. Left to run wild out in the fields, they turn savage and can cause all sorts of damage. Periodic extermination treatments are required.

That baby Om, named Terr by his Draag mistress, Tiwa, the daughter of Ygam’s high magistrate, grows up domesticated and secure but in time grows tired of his existence as a household pet. Therefore, he begins to listen to his mistress’ golden earphones, which transmit knowledge directly to her brain. Soon he has mastered the Draag language and inevitably begins to think of rebellion.

Director Rene Laloux and his co-writer, illustrator Roland Topor, in adapting Stefan Wul’s science-fiction novel “Oms en Serie,” have created a surreal nightmare worthy of Dali, one that is filled with seemingly magical phenomena and bizarre and dangerous flora and fauna. (At one point Terr, having joined the savage Oms, gets a new suit of clothes when some caterpillar-like creatures surround him and weave it directly on him!)

The Draags are indolent and devoted to what seems to be a kind of meditation. For all its paranoia, destruction and suffering--”Fantastic Planet” is not for the very young--Laloux and Topor make a simple point: All living creatures must live in harmony or perish.

* MPAA rating: PG. Times guidelines: some parental guidance advised.

‘Fantastic Planet’

(‘La Planete Sauvage’)

A Cinequanon Pictures release of a Franco-Czechoslovakian co-production of Les Films Armorial-O.R.T.F. (Paris)/Ceskoslovensky Filmexport. Director Rene Laloux. Producers S. Damiani, A. Valio-Cavaglione. Screenplay and dialogue by Roland Topor, Laloux. Based on Stefan Wul’s novel “Oms en Serie.” Original art work Topor. Character graphics Josef Kabrt. Cinematographers Lubomir Reithar, Boris Baromykin.. Chief editors Helene Arnal, Marta Tomasiova. Music Alain Goraguer. In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 12 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Nuart for one week, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 478-6379.

Note: Portions of this review by Kevin Thomas first appeared in the Los Angeles Times on Feb. 6, 1974.