Containing the hallmarks of great sci-fi fantasy movies, this enthralling but underseen animation from the ‘Fantastic Planet’ director, with art stylings from Mœbius, gives us intergalactic, mind-bending travel, as an urgent rescue crew attempts to reach a boy stranded on a hostile planet.
Review #2,929
Dir. Rene Laloux
1982 | France | Animation, Sci-Fi, Fantasy | 79min | 1.66:1 | French
Not rated – likely to be PG13
Cast: Jean Valmont, Michel Elias, Frederic Legros
Plot: Piel, the young son of a space traveler, is left behind on the planet Perdide, where huge and hungry hornets roam. Jaffar, Piel’s father’s friend, abandons an important mission to rescue the child, with the help of an old sailor and two dwarves who communicate by telepathy.
Awards: –
Distributor: Tamasa Distribution
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Rescue Mission; Enslavement; Telepathy; Time
Narrative Style: Slightly Complex
Pace: Normal
Audience Type: Slightly Mainstream
Viewed: MUBI
Spoilers: No
With the new 4K restoration doing the rounds at various international film festivals, it is high time that Time Masters gets the credit that it deserves.
Very much overshadowed by the same director’s earlier Fantastic Planet (1973), still considered a cult animation par excellence today, Time Masters is decidedly more kid-friendly with less explicit violence and nudity, though it contains the hallmarks of great sci-fi fantasy movies.
This includes a deceptively straightforward plot that unmasks as a deep, enriching tale of overcoming the odds and refusing oppression.
In quite a similar vein to Fantastic Planet, where tiny humans must fight against genocidal aggression from blue-skinned giants, Time Masters begins as an urgent rescue mission when a little child (the sole surviving member of a family) is stranded on an inhospitable planet with giant hornets after an attack.
“I’d rather be destroyed than enslaved.”
A spaceship crew must battle bad actors, both internal and external, in an adventure that bends the limits of rational possibility.
We also get two homunculi—cute, telepathic sentient beings that can ‘smell’ thoughts—tagging along, providing requisite humour and instigating mind-reading actions that may change the course of the narrative.
With the aesthetics based on Jean Giraud a.k.a. Mœbius’s iconic art style, director Rene Laloux gives us highly imaginative worlds to immerse ourselves in, though I must say it is the film’s thematic exploration of existence, time and power that elevates it from just a mere entertaining head trip.
What truly matters are the characters that you fall in love with as they navigate alterations to their body, mind and spirit. As they seek a just world with less ‘smelly’ thoughts, that race against time to save a poor boy becomes mythic.
I wished there had been sequels, but producing these kinds of indie animation was already such a tall order to begin with.
Grade: A-
Trailer:
Music:
Eternality Tan 
[…] Time Masters (1982) […]
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