Fantastic Planet (1973)

Fantastic Planet (La planete sauvage)
Directed by Rene Laloux
Written by Rene Laloux and Roland Topor from a novel by Stefan Wul
1973/France/Czechoslovakia
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Narrator: After a while, I lost my intimacy with Tiwa. As she grew up, she gave up her playthings.  Deprived of lessons, I decided to run away.

On the planet of Ygam, giant blue beings called Draags coexist with tiny humanoids called Oms.  Oms can be domesticated and kept as pets.  Wild Oms reproduce prodigiously, hide in trees and caves, and are treated by the Draags as vermin.  Adult Draags spend a good deal of their time in meditation.

As the film begins, a giant blue hand is playing roughly with a Om mother, who is frantically trying to flee with her newborn baby.  The mother “stops moving” and Tiwa, a young Draag, begs her father to let her adopt the baby.  She names him Terr.  All Oms will run away given the slightest opportunity but Terr is controlled remotely by his owner with a collar around his neck.

Draags learn through a device that imparts knowledge permanently into their memory cells.  Terr can get the message too and learns along with Tiwa.  He then runs away with the knowledge device and meets a female who is able to remove his collar.  The two of them join a colony of Oms and Terr shares the knowledge.  There are many clashes on the way to peaceful coexistence of the races.  I loved the ending.

Well, fantastic is right!  Everything about this movie is spendid from the surreal artwork, to the clever story, to the beautiful music.  Take 72 minutes and lose yourself in a different world.

American Trailer (I watched a sub-titled version)