On the planet Ygam live gigantic androids called Draag who practice meditation. Their children spend much of their time in the company of Oms, tiny humans from a destroyed planet used as pets by the Draag. Terr, raised and cared for by Tiwa since birth, senses that the giants' wisdom is transmitted between them through messages picked up by a kind of electronic headset. When Tiwa is initiated into meditation, Terr escapes, stealing one of these headsets.
Based on Stefan Wul's science fiction novel Homo Domesticus (Oms en série, 1957), published in Italy by Ponzoni Editore, the film is the result of the meeting of the brilliant minds of legendary director René Laloux (Les Temps Morts, Les Escargots, Masters of Time), and Roland Topor, founder of the surrealist movement "Panique" with Arrabal and Jodorowsky, an illustrator, writer, author, and actor.
Alain Goraguer's hypnotic music recalls the sounds of Pink Floyd but also the film scores of 1970s Italian and French cinema: the soundtrack to THE WILD PLANET has also become a cult classic over the years.
Grand Jury Award at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival
Anguished by both the future and the present, The WILD PLANET fits perfectly into post-2001: A Space Odyssey science fiction, but from the other side of the fence. Laloux and Topor's universe is one where the posthuman corresponds to the inhuman, without any fascination with the mystical and ascetic taking over.
Metaphysical settings à la de Chirico and dirty pencils, lysergic music and hypnotic shots, it's not even the moral itself that calibrates the film's power: as in the best fantasies, nightmare and dream are one and the same, and what attracts is what repels, just as the chilling is what is worth telling.
