DVD Review: Gandahar (1988)

The third and final animated feature in René Laloux’s sparse but luminous career is often compared unfavourably to his groundbreaking The Fantastic Planet (1973). In fact Gandahar is a compelling, moody, visually stunning work which though flawed evokes a genuine sense of the alien and the dreamlike.

Warrior Sylvain has been tasked by the Council of Women to discover the cause of a recent spate of deaths and abductions in peaceful, agrarian Gandahar. He travels across the ‘circumscribing oceans’ and discovers a race of mute, murderous androids who have been petrifying Gandaharians and spiriting them through a mysterious door. And the mystery deepens: for each body brought through the door, another android marches out.

Before solving the puzzle – an unusually satisfying and cerebral solution for animated SF – Sylvain has time to meet beautiful blue-skinned Airelle and a race of deformed mutants, both of whom are of help in his quest. Indeed, the imaginary menagerie of alien creatures is one of the film’s highlights.

Almost every scene contains phantasmagorical flora and fauna as beautiful as they are dreamily disquieting, following invious genetic paths every bit as ingenious as those on earth, yet resolutely foreign. Among the illusory zoo are bullets that flower lethally on impact; herbivorous dragons; ‘mirror birds,’ effectively biological TV cameras; a giant telekinetic brain called Métamorphe; and a supporting cast of dozens of land animals with a hugely entertaining variety of ambulatory styles. This creative achievement on the part of Laloux, his chief Animator Roland Topor and source artist Philippe Caza – independent in a sense from the film as a narrative piece – should not be underestimated.

Though sheer imagination is timeless, the film has aged poorly in some ways. Pacing veers between chaotic and ponderous several times during the 83-minute runtime. Eyes acclimated to the number-crunched precision of Pixar and DreamWorks will find the hand-assembled animation jerky and lugubrious at times, while Gabriel Yared’s synthesised score is arguably more evocative of Miami Vice than of vastly distant alien civilisations.

By the same token, some may find that the film’s relatively primitive matting and score actually add to its charm. The analogue-trumps-digital argument applies here: somehow the graft of the making expresses itself in the product, and the film’s visuals have a lusciousness about them that CGI might never achieve. Of course, if ever there were a genre in which warm-fuzzy-organic might not beat cold-precise-mechanical, it’s science fiction …

Laloux (who died in 2004) made long cartoons for adults. Like The Fantastic Planet (but unlike Les Maîtres du temps (1982)), Gandahar contains frequent mild sexual imagery. Airelle is seldom encumbered by much clothing, and Métamorphe, though ostensibly a giant brain, is a dead ringer for a circumcised penis. Yet the overarching mood is one of wide-eyed wonder, not jaded prurience. Thus it makes sense that Laloux’s chosen genre was SF: what better way to recapture the thrill of childhood, where everything is new, unprecedented, unexpected, than to immerse oneself in an alien world where nothing is familiar? If that appeals, so will this vibrant, intricate film.

(Eureka's rerelease is technically unimpeachable. Dialogue is in the original French with subtitles, not the botched English rehash 'directed' by Harvey Weinstein. The visual transfer is impeccable: vivid colour and not an artefact in sight.)

Sam Healy