Fantastic Planet

Clearly an acid driven film of the early 70s, yet somehow even better than Yellow Submarine, for example. Is it the origin of the human race? An allegory of our coming destruction brought about by our failure to appreciate our environment? A Buddhist parable? A vegan morality? Take your pick. No matter how you interpret it, the story telling is magnificent. Don't forget to dose first :-)

"Terr" is an "Om", a sort of "Lilliputian" sized creature on the world of "Ygam" that is governed by the cerebral "Draag". He was captured when he was young, put into a collar and kept as a pet but he is no fool. Content to entertain his young "Draag" owner he also avails himself of their learning - and before too long knows many secrets of their industrialised society that they think him too immature to possibly comprehend. Then he manages to escape and flees into the company of other undomesticated "Om" whom he quickly befriends and even empowers to believe they can fight back as the "Draag" embark on some punitive expeditions with their vastly superior technology that function a little like hoovers. The question is: is it all over for the "Om" or could they use his knowledge to retaliate and force some sort of truce - or perhaps even an enduring peace, between the two races? There are allegories a plenty here, not just those identifying the distinctions between two notional species but also those as readily applied to adjacent nation states or neighbouring tribes, and the quirkily potent illustration of the ebbing and flowing of relationships between masters and servants/slaves is not wasted either. The technique and colourful style of the animation also offers us some quite effective contrasts between the enormous blue "Draag" and the tiny human-esque "Om" with a sort of tortoise and hare philosophy; there's some lovely detail to the facial expressions and also a gritty score from Alain Goraguer that wouldn't have sounded out of place in a rock opera of the early 1970s. It's asking us questions about what it means to be civilised and what the concomitant responsibilities of that are as it provides us with some entertaining food-for-thought along the way.