The new 4K restoration of the uncut French version of Gandahar is being released in New York City on August 28 before expanding nationally.
Man, who remembers the crop of great, strange, watch ’em in your buddy’s finished basement (probably after a couple of bong hits) animated classics like Heavy Metal, Fantastic Planet, Wizards, and the such? Pre-internet, popping these movies into your VHS or DVD player was like playing the freak-out lottery: What weird and wonderful delights awaited you were anyone’s guess.
And now, Janus Films has unleashed a new 4K restoration of one such title, the late French animator René Laloux’s Gandahar. Laloux was also the mind behind 1973’s better-remembered cult classic Fantastic Planet (aka La Planète Sauvage). Like that film, 1987’s Gandahar is a trippy (I promise not to use that word again in this review) visit to a far-out realm, only in this case it’s a land where soulless robots attempt to overtake a seemingly utopian society, and the battle for freedom must be fought not just in the here and now, but also 1,000 years in the future. Along the way, the dangers of genetic experiments, the consequences of creating an ultimate weapon, and the effect such decisions have on future generations are all explored. Also, clothing is optional for half of these characters (the female half, as was the wont of the time).
An edited and dubbed version of the film called Light Years was released in North America by (cough) Miramax Films in 1988. That cut even featured dialogue written by legendary sci-fi scribe Isaac Asimov, who adapted the French script, but now Janus has given us the complete and original version of the sci-fi adventure. And really, the steady (sometimes somnambulistic by today’s standards) pace, the heady visuals and concepts, and the French line readings make an English version of Gandahar – voiced by the likes of John Shea, Jennifer Grey and Christopher Plummer, as Light Years apparently was – just seem wrong.
The film begins with scenes of bucolic, if strange, beauty, as a group of blue-skinned villagers fish and eat and play. An anteater-type creature is born from a plant, and immediately the babe suckles at a woman’s chest as if she’s its mother. (Maybe she is?) Birds peck at giant berries while the villagers collect them, giant snails feed while a shepherd looks on, but then suddenly… an attack! The people of Gandahar are being turned to stone by the C-3PO-like (only mean, and black) Men of Metal.
And so in the city of Jasper (which is centered in a giant statue of a woman) the leader of the Council of Women (who has huge eagle wings sticking out of the sides of her head) is advised by her lead scientist (who looks like he’s come straight out of the Green Lanterns’ Guardians of the Universe) to send out an emissary to investigate the situation. (And yes, I could keep inserting parentheticals around just about every noun in this movie to explain some kind of weirdness, which is half the film’s charm right there.)
The young “Servant” Sylvain (voiced by Pierre-Marie Escourrou) is put on the case, and while the character hits his marks as a hero – he rides a flying, flapping, funky mechanical jellyfish; shoots a gun that uses ammo which quickly propagates as spiky weeds; gets the girl; and saves the day – he’s also dry as the desert landscape where that jellyfish crash-lands. Alas, none of the human characters in this tale are particularly engaging, but that’s OK because it’s the weirdos and oddballs that Gandahar is all about.
Take the Deformed, the outcasts of Gandahar who are the result of scientific experimentation – “victims of your genetic games,” they tell Sylvain – and as such have all manner of physicality, from multiple heads to mouths for knees to my favorite, the dude who is just a huge head/chest with arms that he walks on. Also blessed/cursed with the ability to see the future, only to lose it, the Deformed now speak in the past and future tense because that’s how they see the world around them: In 1,000 years, Gandahar has fallen. 1,000 years ago, Gandahar will be saved.
Then there’s Metamorphis (Georges Wilson), a giant brain hanging out in the middle of the Eccentric Ocean, as it is rightfully called. Another forgotten legacy of Gandahar, Metamorphis is either the villain of the film or its hero, depending on your point of view. But that’s the thing about Gandahar the movie – just as its imagery is off-kilter but also beautiful, its loopy time-travel story isn’t terribly interested in adhering to traditional concepts of what an animated film needs to be. So yes, sometimes it’s slow, sometimes its hero is kind of lame, and sometimes it’s rough around the edges. But just like Fantastic Planet before it, it’s not the kind of thing that passes for big-screen animation these days, and that kind of makes it a must-watch right there. (Pass the bong.)
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