Les escargots

Every film of René Laloux force you to think and to make and effort to imagine more than Laloux visually offers. Nowadays seems it isn't an easy and pleasant activity. Unfortunately, we don't have time to the extremely slow and methodical pace of his way of filming.

His old-fashioned animation delightfully remembers the cartoons of my childhood. But in this case the plot is weaker than other Laloux shorts and films.

I strongly recommend the masterpiece "Comment Wang-Fo fut sauvé". Based on a novel embodied in the 1936 book "Nouvelles orientales" written by Marguerite Yourcenar.

This is a simplistic and slightly silly work of surrealist animation that clocks in at barely ten minutes, but is till far more entertaining and watchable than most science fiction film being produced today (and probably most sci-fi films of the past as well). It is mostly a comedy, at first focusing on a farmer who desperately grows his crops to enormous sizes. Then, through unexpected twists and turns, things get pretty wild and before you know it a giant snail is trying to watch a women undress! This is probably one of the quirkiest science fiction films I've ever seen, and is surprisingly upbeat and lighthearted in overall tone (even if it does contain a fair share of violence an probable death; however all of this is playful and cartoonish in nature so...) considering the same director-animator duo made not only "Fantastic Planet", but also a short animated classic named "Dead Times", which is one of the most depressing f*cking short films I've ever seen. It's good to see that these two can be a little less heavy handed and sad every now and then.

This is an animation that is hard to describe. Its not bad, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it. Its not very long, so I would recommend finding it on YouTube and giving it a watch. Its certainly an experience.

Having seen Fantastic planet as part of a course on animation, which was a weirdly enjoyable film, I found this little gem on MUBI, well it found me.

The story is simple as is the style of animation - 2D cutout, made prominent by Terry Gilliam during the Monty Python days.

This is a fantastical tale, in which a simple premise - a struggling farmer uses his own tears to make his crop of lettuce grow, but they grew too well and attract snails, which eat the lettuce and also grow to enormous size. The giant snails then start terrorising the humans, all very funny.

While somewhat sexist by today's cult standards, with the depiction of woman and how the giant snails target them, there are social commentaries in play here that are not overtly thrust upon the viewer.

Well worth a look.

An old man tries to grow crops on a strange planet. He has no success, even though he waters them. Frustrated, he begins to cry and his tears cause the plants to grow to enormous size. However, at night, snails begin to invade his crops and they grow to an enormous size and begin to attack the planet's inhabitants. Even though they are slow moving it seems they can't be outrun (remember the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes). It's s silly little plot with unique animation in a sort of Monty Python style.