Deprived Of Lessons, I Decided To Run Away: Fantastic Planet (1973)

Some amazing films I come to the way of multiple suggestions from prolific and reliable sources, whether they be dear friends or noted critics.  Other wonderful experiences with films come from picking up a previously unknown film as part of a package or at a flea market both that probably lifted their merchandise from questionable sources to begin with.  I am fond of the results that come from both of these avenues of discover, however, there is a third set of discoveries that seem to be my personal favorite, those being the movies that I unearth during occasional bouts of insomnia or a general inability to sleep.  Usually hoping to find something with an ambiance or simplicity that will lull me into drowsiness and eventually sleep, I end up finding works whose surreal leanings and captivating narratives challenge my pseudo sleep state to its very core.  In the past movies of this vein have included the surprisingly poignant look at mental illness and online gaming through Ben-X, or jarringly, yet critically realized experimental films like Damned If You Don't.  Last night I found myself facing the rare moment of lethargic awareness and was hesitant to commit to anything lengthy and decided that the cult classic French animated film Fantastic Planet would serve as my point of viewing, because I assumed that it would be easily paused should my weariness overcome me, however, I realized almost seconds into the film, with a shrill opening and freaky aesthetic, that Rene Laloux's animated statement on the nature of human existence, would be stealing the next hour of my possible sleep and I was completely fine with that outcome.  Fantastic Planet, is as its name suggests very fantastical.  In the animation style made known by Terry Gilliam and famous by The Beatles Yellow Submarine, Fantastic Planet takes on a bizarre quality, full of humanoid figures whose blank stares and robotic movements both captivating and disconcerting.  The visuals alone could have been enough for me to completely embrace this work, but the fact that it makes very focused and astute statements about the existential being only add to its importance.  Honestly, I am surprised that I did not find myself completely haunted by nightmares when the film finally, and abruptly ended, its exhaustive nature proving the perfect dose to my quest for rest that happened immediately.

Forbidden Planet begins with the frantic fleeing of an unnamed woman who darts back and forth with her child in hand as objects inexplicably fall from the sky blocking her path of escape, suddenly and very intensely blue fingers and hands begin flying towards her, eventually grabbing her and lifting her into the air and immediately dropping her.  The pressure of the fall causing the woman to die as her young child looks on in a state of confusion.  The blue beings are known as Traags and tower over the small humanoid creature that they refer to as Oms, and aside from existing in a tribe-like state, the Oms are primarily seen as playthings for the Traag children, who are not yet capable of existing in a state of constant meditation like the adults.  One young Traag named Tiva decides to save the small child of the recently deceased woman Om, naming him Terr and teaching him the ways and world of the Traags.  Terr, realizing the wealth of knowledge in front of him, laps up everything that Tiva has to teach, in the process becoming a sentient creature aware of the relationship he possesses as a creature in relation to the Traags.  This leads to Terr fleeing in fear of his ultimate demise, bringing along with him a device used by the Traags in the hope that he can share the knowledge with other Om tribes living on the outskirts of the Traag fortress.  Now possessing the information most dear to the Traags the Oms mount a revolt, led by Terr that results in the first death of a Traag at the hands of Oms.  The Traags baffled by such a possible occurrence, up their "extermination" of the Oms in a stroke of genocide by poison gas.  Terr and a handful of other Oms escape the ordeal.  Eventually, with his expansive knowledge of Traag culture, Terr is able to take control of one of their devices, a laser that interferes in the Traags copulation thus breaking their hereditary line.  The Traags are forced then to acknowledge the presence of the Oms as something far more than playthings, but as a group equal to them in power and resilience, despite their relatively diminutive stature.  The film ends with a suggestion that the feuding between both groups has ended and that a peaceful coexistence has emerged between the Traags and Oms, one that is assumedly to last forever.

Fantastic Planet is one of those films whose true meaning, like its animation style is something familiar and identifiable, yet terribly intangible and clearly a simulacra of what a viewer would assume to be reality.  Leave it to a French animator to create such a film.  However, in its seemingly impossible nature, one can grasp multiple possibilities, ranging from realized statements on colonization and French guilt, to far reach introspective considerations on metaphysical identity as it relates to an insurmountable and endless universe.  I realize that to attack this film from any direction is to ultimately rely on reading specific moments or interactions and to invariably ignore others, but it is truly rare for a piece of film theory or criticism to appropriate every single frame and interaction into the larger theory.  As such, I want to touch upon the highly existential nature of this work, one that posits a world so left up to contingency, chance and an impossible control over things as to suggest that they are part of a game in which the Oms, an appropriate allusion to Hommes, the French term for humans.  I have talked about game theory in the past on the blog as it relates to a work like The Cooler, wherein the casino setting doubles as a metaphor for a person being subject to contingency and chance, even in the most seemingly assured of situations.  In Fantastic Planet this notion that a human is subjected to some game played by an unseen force, is placed in the metaphorical hands of the Traags who literally use Oms as their playthings.  Of course, the question then becomes what meaning arises from Terr's discovery of the cogs at work.  This is either a moment where he submits to the existential understanding that all is meaningless, aside from what he deems his own, in his case a quest for knowledge.  Another possibility is that the film is intended to depict a push toward enlightenment after being stuck in an existential malaise, in this the dreary and haunting presence of the Traags double as that constant woe resulting from meaninglessness.  Indeed, it is probably appropriate to read the work as a work about achieving enlightenment, at least in this case it makes the quite out of nowhere ending highly positive.

Key Scene:  People who have read many of my blog posts know I am a sucker for openings that immediately establish the mood and precedent for a film.  Fantastic Planet very much has such an opening and I promise you it will yank you into its world quickly.

Relatively cheap DVD's are available for this film, but since I intend to go region free with my bluray player in the upcoming months, I intend to get the French bluray that is available.  Should you be in that market, I would suggest doing the same.

A Friend Of Mine Went On Carousel, Now He's Gone: Logan's Run (1976)

The very nature of the dystopian sci-fi thriller is to lull audiences with awe-inspiring imagery only to counter such beauty with jarring realities of a nightmarish and terribly Orwellian futurescape, however, very few films manage to take the concept and stretch it out over a feature length film and not completely lose steam halfway through, this certainly happens at times during The Omega Man and Soylent Green, perhaps Charlton Heston is to blame.  However, when a director and its subject matter gets it right the result can be quite astounding, as is certainly the case with THX 1138, which is both a visual feast and a narrative masterpiece.  While not quite on the level of the early Lucas work, Logan's Run does indeed manage to be an impressionist vision of the future that substantiates itself with a stellar narrative and commentary on the future.  Hell, it even proves to have come out in one of the most seminal years in filmmaking, setting along side Taxi Driver, Cria Cuervos and Nashville, all films that i have provided praise for to some degree in on this blog, although the latter was, technically, released a year earlier.  Logan's Run is particularly good, because while it certainly makes viewers aware of its showy elements, whether they be the expansive miniature sets intended to display the future, or the heavy emphasis on stop-motion special effects and hand drawn animation, all elements exist as a means to expand on the story, as opposed to distract viewers from any degree of lack, although it is admittedly hard not to become completely overwhelmed by something like the carousel scene, which works on a highly poetic level, as well as a grounded undermining of the notion of moving on to a "better place."  I would argue that very few contemporary directors within the sci-fi genre manage to comprehend the future in quite this way, except maybe The Wachowski's but even then their works clearly exist with a degree of homage to this works Platonic philosophy.  If all of this fails to sell this cinematic masterpiece, there is some glorious hair going on that even includes the likes of a young Farah Fawcett.

Logan's Run is set in the future, 2274 to be exact, wherein lifespans cut off at the age of thirty and individuals are sent onto Carousel a spiraling upward magical ride that leads those at cut-off to a sort of rebirth, meaning, of course, that no individual within this society is old, nor has ever seen an old person.  While a majority of the citizens gladly embrace their assumed rebirth a considerable amount of individuals are suspicious of the carousel as a form of population control and attempt to avoid their turn on it, becoming known as Runners in the process, precisely because they must run away from the world in order to avoid such a fate.  In comes Logan 5 (Michael York) and his friend Francis 7 (Richard Jordan) as Sandman, whose jobs within this society are to prevent runners from escaping, even if it means killing them to do so.  Logan 5, unlike Francis 7 begins to reconsider his role as a Sandman, and his eventual fate at the carousel when he takes one runners possession to a processor, and discovers their ankh necklace to be a symbol of eternal life.  The computer in rebellion pushes Logan 5's processing date ahead, forcing him to flee in fear of carousel, becoming a runner himself, acquiring the help of another runner Jessica 6 (Jenny Agutter) to help escape the colony.  This escape leads them deep underground where they discover a frozen underworld in which the bodies of those runners frozen, as well as food kept from the outside world.  Box (Roscoe Lee Browne) a robot attempts to stop them from running, but Logan 5 and Jessica 6 eventually escape relatively unharmed, even managing to find the overgrown world of Washington D.C., although they are unfamiliar with it, finding a the aged statue of Abraham Lincoln quite bizarre.  During their exploration they met an old man, played supremely by Peter Ustinov, who explains to them the world outside of their colony, as well as the joys of growing old.  This revelation, in the eyes of Logan 5 and Jessica 6, must be shared with their colony, and after fighting off those who disagree, including Francis 7, they share the experiences of the old man with their colony, as they all begin to rise out of the cave of lies and false hopes of recycling.

While the main theme of this film certainly concerns issues of overpopulation, sustenance and fears of growing old, as do many science fiction works, it is hard not to consider how excellent of a consideration this is of Plato's Allegory of the Cave.  I know I refer to this quite regularly on the blog, but Logan's Run is truly a stellar adaptation of one of the great philosophers most universal teachings.  I will assume readers are quite familiar with this work and, as such, will not elaborate to heavily, however, I do want to note that it is essentially about living in metaphorical darkness, and seeing a light,  or becoming educated and attempting to share those realizations with persons still living in the darkness of ignorance.  Director Michael Anderson extends this notion to argue that the ignorance of people living in Logan 5's colony is a direct result of consumer excess, as much of the colony is quite reminiscent of a large shopping mall.  They chose to agree to young age and the comforts of conspicuous consumption, even fearing wrinkles or old age, let alone a person who even begins to question the possibility of something aside from carousel.  The film deals with seeing the light in a very literal sense, in that Logan 5 and Jessica 6 emerge from the cave into a blistering sun, although it to occurs in a educational sense, as they purposefully emerge in a dilapidated Washington D.C., a veritable locale of knowledge as guiding light.  However, it is their interaction with an individual who is equally, if not more, happy than they living outside the colony and growing old that inspires them to share their experiences, particularly those relating to learning.  It is also no accident, that the old man quotes T.S. Eliot, whose poetry would personify the idea of expanding the human consciousness to things beyond even the tangible, although as the closing moments of the film do emphasize, it is quite often the quantifiable elements that help move people from blind ignorance to enlightenment.

Key Scene:  The entire "face change" sequence is a god damn vision of cinematic dystopia, that is at once beautiful and nightmarish.

Buy this on bluray, it is a spectacle and well worth seeing in the highest quality possible.

Being Normal Is Vastly Overrated: Halloweentown (1998)

I promised to give a vast study of horror films in my themed month for October and certainly intend to deliver on that promise, which helps to explain the next film on my tour, the 1998 Disney television movie Halloweentown, a pick by my girlfriend for the list and probably the biggest genre stretch on my list.  However, to say that it is a stretch is not an attempt to undermine the work in the slightest, there are moments in this film that I recall from my younger days as being genuinely scary and ones that could still be frightful to the right group of youngsters.  It was fun to revisit this film, as I only had fleeting memories of the plot and had no idea the film included the consummate Debbie Reynolds.  Of course the plot is a bit fractured, but one can expect such occurrences when, firstly the film is made for television and secondly it is directed towards a youth audience.  Many of the characters exist a plot devices and manage to have a very cursory place in the brief movie, only clocking in at a bit over eighty minutes.  The plot it does possess though is well-executed and contains some moments of comedic brilliance as well as a few genuine scares, all culminating in a great commentary on embracing ones uniqueness and accepting even against stalwart reasoning that some things are, in fact, magic.  Finally, the make-up and costuming in this film are stellar, particularly the various beasts and creatures shown throughout the film and one scene of exceptionally good stop motion animation.  It is probably going to be the only family friendly movie blogged about this month, and one of the few I have blogged about to date, but it is certainly a movie for persons of many age groups as its humor ranges from simple slapstick, to some clearly adult oriented humor.

The story in Halloweentown begins on Halloween, as should be little surprise as three kids look longingly at the festivities from inside their house.  The children include a young girl named Sophie (Emily Roeske), an incorrigible nerd named Dylan (Joey Zimmerman) and the oldest daughter and eccentric Marnie (Kimberly J. Brown).  Despite their constant pleas to partake in trick or treating, their mother Gwen, played by Judith Hoag (who is likely better known as April O'Neil in the live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film), denies their request.  She feels adamantly that they will be somehow ruined by the events of such a day.  Viewers are uncertain as to her concerns, until it is realized with the entrance of their grandmother Aggie (Debbie Reynolds), that they are related to an ancient family of witches.  Despite Aggie's less than subtle hints at their unique nature, Gwen denies them the right to explore this alternative life, instead wishing for them to have a "normal" life, despite being without a father figure.  Upon overhearing her mother and grandmother argue about her right to be a witch, Marnie follows her grandmother to Halloweentown via a flying bus to another world, only to be joined by Dylan and Sophie who share an equal curiosity.  Upon landing the group attempts to find their grandmother, but not before running into Calabar (Robin Thomas) Halloweentown's mayor.  He aids them in transportation to their grandmother's house via a taxi ride from a wise cracking skeleton named Benny, voiced by Rino Romano.  It is at this point that the children discover that trouble is afoot in Halloweentown and their grandmother is attempting to stop its occurrence.  Followed hot on the tail by an irate Gwen, the children and grandmother end up in a theater where it is revealed that Calabar is behind the evil in the town, freezing all who disobey him.  In the process of confronting Calabar, Gwen and Aggie are frozen by a spell and the children are left to complete Aggie's spell, which requires obtaining ingredients such as the hair of a werewolf and the sweat of a ghost.  They succeed in doing so and finally get the means to confront Calabar, and with a little help from a town local the group beats him and everything is returned to normal, with a suggestion that the three children, despite their mother's original denial, will indeed be trained in the dark arts.

The movies commentary is rather simple, as it should be considering that it is essentially directed at children.  However, the lesson taught is a very important one, especially for young adults and children. Instead of simply being a horror/comedy family film, Halloweentown posits something much greater in its suggestion that one should embrace uniqueness even if certain groups in society claim it to be, in this case, demonic.  Gwen represents a troubled single mother who holds falsely onto an idea that somehow by denying her heritage and identity that her children will exist in a better world, when it is clear that her disconnect and denial are only bringing more questions up within her children and arguably raising them to be social outcasts, as an early reaction with some of Marnie's friends suggests.  Aggie, in a maternal, and somewhat ancestral sense, claims this heritage and struggles desperately to keep her grandchildren practicing long after her passing.  The film also embraces a feminist ideology in that many of the spells require a group of women to unite together to make it more powerful, made all the more pertinent in that these women are of different ages.  The brief film also tackles notions of beauty and friendship, as occurs between Marnie and Luke (Phillip Van Dyke) a "dashing" young boy in Halloweentown who takes a liking to Marine, only to betray her, in what viewers come to discover was a Devil's bargain with Calaber to make him look better.  Essentially, Halloweentown contains a series of life lessons for young viewers and even a few reminders to parents on embracing their familial identity and heritage, even if it is not the mainstream idea of normal.  If anything the film denies denial.

Key Scene:  The obtaining of ingredients montage is quite fun and probably the funniest moment in the film.

I want to tell everybody to go out and buy this film, but I know it is for only a select few, not to mention that it is unusually expensive for what it is and, furthermore, it seems to sell out quickly after being stocked, at least that is what happened repeatedly at the Target near my house.