Fantastic Planet (1973)

So…I innocently picked this as my next film because it was short. Short doesn’t necessarily mean easily-digested, though. The “fantastic planet” in this French/Czech film is not Earth, even though we first see a human being – it is “Ygam”, a planet peopled by giant blue humanoids calling themselves the “Draags”. There are colonies of Homo sapiens on Ygam, but they are considerably smaller, and the Draags treat them in much the way we see rats – some keep tame ones as pets, others see the wild ones as pests. We’re introduced to this world the day one such human – or “Om”, as the Draags call them – is orphaned in the wild as a baby. A young Draag girl, “Tiwa”, adopts the baby, naming him “Terr” and fitting him with a magnetic collar that works like a wireless retractable leash. Soon she is taking Terr everywhere – to a friend’s house where they play dress-up with him, poking around her parents’ house where they watch the strange “meditation” ritual all Draag adults engage in, and to her…