Gandahar (1988)

Director:

René Laloux

Writers:

Jean-Pierre Andrevon (novel)
Isaac Asimov (adaptation) (English version)

Release Date:

2 March 1988 (France)

Genre:

Adventure | Sci-Fi | Animation | Fantasy

Plot:

An evil force from a 1000 years in the future begins to destroy an idyllic paradise, where the citizens are in perfect harmony with nature.

Plot Keywords:

Deformed | Turned To Stone | Robot | Invasion | Time Travel

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Pierre-Marie Escourrou	...	Sylvain (voice)
Catherine Chevallier	...	Airelle (voice)
Georges Wilson	...	Métamorphe (voice)
Anny Duperey	...	Ambisextra (voice)
Jean-Pierre Ducos	...	Blaminhor (voice)
Christine Paris	...	Porte-parole (voice)
Zaira Benbabis	...	Voix Enregistrées (voice)
Claude Degliame	...	Voix Enregistrées (voice)
Olivier Cruveiller	...	Homme-métal (voice)
Jean-Pierre Jorris	...	Transformés (voice)
Dominique Maurin	...	Transformés (voice) (as Dominique Maurin-Collignon)
Jean-Jacques Scheffer	...	Transformés (voice)
Jean Saudray	...	Transformés (voice)
Frédéric Witta	...	Transformés (voice)
Philippe Noël	...	Transformés (voice)

Also Known As:

Light Years (USA) (dubbed version)

Runtime:

USA:83 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Colour:

Colour

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

USA:PG

Company:

Col.Ima.Son

Quotes:

Blaminhoe: We have lived in peace so long, we've neglected the possiblity of evil and we may have forgotten how to fight it.

They Never Made Them Like This....

French animator Rene Laloux of "Fantastic Planet" renown, attempted to make another surreal sci-fi adventure with the 80's "Ghandar" or as Isac Asimov and Harvey Wienstien decided to call it for those of us in the states "Light Years", which since no... space travel takes place, and since the movie is about a fictional country called "Gandahar" is probably a bad title. "Light Years" I guess sounds more sci-fi-ish, and if this film was to succeed in the states(it didn't) it was gonna need every bit of conventionality it could muster.

The story is a complex one involving the standard sci-fi tropes of eugenics, time travel, death, and utopia, and though it's certainly more involved than most animated sci-fi (a good deal of the time were watching the characters talk), it's really the visualization of the world and it's inhabitants which makes this movie worth seeing.

Like "Fantastic Planet" before it, Laloux's environments are some of the most alien that have ever been imagined. The landscape is often undulating Daliesuqe deserts, which strange trees which resemble simultaneously bodily organs and geysers, a young girl offering her breast to a new born who looks like a tapir, born out of a grown embryonic plant, a city of underground mutants who resemble Blemmyes, ancient African monsters with heads beneath their shoulders, an army hollow soldiers who turn people into statues, video camera like birds who can lift entire buildings in swarms, and of course a colossal mile wide sentient brain in the middle of the ocean.

Laloux uses sci-fi story structures to create, very evocative images that do not look like anyone else's, ever, something few filmmakers in any medium or genre, can claim with straight face.

That being said the English voice acting is just decent, not great but decent, it keeps the story moving, but doesn't draw you into any of the characters. "Light Years" like "Fantastic Planet" or the animated films of Svankmajer are more concerned with form than content, but not oblivious of the latter.

So if you like heady sci-fi, visually stunning design, and unique animation, this is not to be passed up. If not it's probably not bad to see once anyway, just for the visual treat of it all, and the more I mull over the story, not the plot, I'm more impressed with how well and vividly it told me a story I've heard a hundred times before.