Gandahar is threatened by a mysterious enemy. Hundreds of Mirror birds, guardians of the kingdom, are destroyed by a laser beam. In Jasper, capital of Gandahar, Queen Ambisextra decides to send a servant called Sylvain to acknowledge and to destroy the enemy. Sylvain then leaves the country for a long journey. He will meet the transformed people, strange creatures and an army of black robots that could be responsible for the killings.
Japanese and Disney rule the world of animation since years. Nevertheless, talented people can be found all over the world and even in France! Sci-Fi movies are not very common in France. And Sci-fi animated movies are extremly hard to find. Director René Laloux and comic designer Philippe Caza worked together on Gandahar, which is in the first place, a novel from Jean-Pierre Andrevon. The story is anchored in pure SF genre. The world of Gandahar was created from A to Z by all these artists. Visual imagination is the first striking thing in this movie. This provokes an immediate change of surroundings. We are literally in another world, an exotic eden where flowers give birth to small animals and trees have a weird shape. People living there are pacifists and have a blue skin. The women wander half naked and jail cells look like egg shells... Although it was directed in 1987, the film content still remains topical. Only a few design aspects and some sound effects may look a bit old. But even if some drawings look like outdated, it's still interesting what choices were made back then. This takes part of the movie atmosphere, especially about the large monster gallery. The story is about a creation which slips from the hands of its creator. This is a famous sci-fi concept. Here we have the metamorph, a kind of super giant brain, symbolising consciousness. The "transformed" people are here to illustrate the idea of racism. These people are left aside because of their physical differences. In the real world, people can be segretated according to their skin color or their physical appearance. Here we have mutants. Some of them have too many arms but other not enough! They would be the victims of hazardous genetic experiments. The movie conveys a morality that could be valuable to the contemporary world. The giant brain is a way to show that there's only one way of thinking because it decides what has to be allowed and what has to be forbidden. But the variety of people and their differences finally prevail when they work together. The metamorph has been created by Gandahar people and this brings us to the concept of the creature overwhelming its creator, who's filled with too much passion to be careful with new technologies. Add to these great Sci-Fi concepts, an original and exotic score from Gabriel Yared and you get an anticipation animated movie that is and will be visionnary. Maybe tomorrow, human genetically modified will appear and articial intelligences will become aware of their own existence... René Laloux was born in 1929. In 1955, he's hired in a psychiatric institue. His work with the patients will inspire him for his future animated works. His first long feature is released in 1973. It is called : la planète sauvage, followed in 1977 by les maîtres du temps |
  
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