Les Maîtres du temps
Encyclopedia
Les Maîtres du temps is a 1982
Franco
-Hungarian
animated
science fiction
feature film
directed
by René Laloux
and designed
by Mœbius
. It is based on the 1958
science fiction
novel
L'Orphelin de Perdide (The Orphan of Perdide) by Stefan Wul
. The film centres around a boy, Piel, who is stranded on Perdide, a desert planet where giant killer hornets live. He awaits rescue by the space pilot Jaffar, the exiled prince Matton, his sister Belle and Jaffar's old friend Silbad who are trying to reach Perdide and save Piel before it is too late.
A man named Claude is driving a six-wheeled, insect-like vehicle over the desert surface of Perdide very fast. He attempts to communicate with Jaffar, saying that "they attacked" and that "Annie is dead." After a crash that wrecks his vehicle, he lets his son Piel down from the wreckage; he cannot extricate himself. Piel is too young to comprehend the red and white, ovoid interstellar transceiver that Claude hands him. So Claude tells him that it is named "Mike" and will talk to him, and to do whatever Mike tells him to do, but first to run to a coral-like forest and stay within it. After Piel has reached the forest, the crashed vehicle explodes.
Jaffar is piloting a spacecraft, the Double Triangle 22. He plans to reach Perdide by being pulled along by the gravitational field of the Blue Comet. But he's several planetary systems away, and does not go directly to Perdide or the Blue Comet. Instead he heads for a planet where his friend Silbad resides, as Silbad has experience of living on Perdide. Jaffar's passengers, Prince Matton and his sister, Princess Belle, have been deposed from their planet; they bring with them a treasure the Prince took along to fund his restoration. Matton is not at all happy about being diverted and makes no attempt to hide his displeasure; throughout he is depicted as a lazy, arrogant and deceitful individual.
Each contacts Piel with the transceiver; when they meet Silbad, he sings Piel a song as well, as does the Princess. Whilst on Silbad's planet, they witness the metamorphosis
of a water-lily like organism into dozens of empathic, sentient, primary colored homunculi, two of whom, named Yula and Jad, stow away on Jaffar's spacecraft seeking adventure. Unknown to the Prince, Yula and Jad play with and then dispose of the treasure via the airlock.
When Matton speaks with Piel, he nearly convinces the trusting boy to drown himself in a lake, but is discovered by Belle, who stuns him with a pistol weapon and talks Piel to safety.
In order to rendezvous with the Blue Comet, Jaffar pilots his craft to the planet Gamma 10. Prince Matton escapes in a shuttlecraft to the surface of Gamma 10, which is inhabited by faceless, identical white male angels. They capture both Matton and Jaffar, who followed in a space lifeboat. The men will be thrown into the living, thinking amorphous being which controls the planet. Although they are unable to rescue Jaffar, Yula and Jad are able to forewarn him of the fate intended for the captives: they are to become one with the controlling being, dominated entirely by it, losing all sense of individuality in the process and becoming one of the angel-beings. They instruct Jaffar to resist being assimilated with all the hate and contempt he can muster. When Jaffar tells the Prince to do so as well, Matton leaps into the being and does so, not only destroying it and the building but causing the skin and wings of all the angels to peel away to reveal that they were originally scruffy spacemen reminiscent of pirates. Rescued from the surface of Gamma 10 by Yula and Jad, the freed captives are taken to the Double Triangle 22, where they are given food and drink, and the presence of their minds cause comical problems for Yula and Jad.
Thereby Jaffar acquires a crew of misfits on the journey to Perdide. Soon afterwards, a patrol cruiser of the Interplanetary Reform catches up with the Double Triangle 22, pursuing the fleeing royals and the treasure the now-deceased Prince stole. Jaffar considers that the 'pirates' from Gamma 10 should be able to hijack the Reform cruiser and take it for themselves. During the discussion of this plan, one of rescued beings from Gamma 10, Onyx the Digeed of Gnaz, is revealed to be able to change his shape to resemble any other object. Onyx will impersonate the missing treasure, allowing the escapees to access the Reformist ship.
Jaffar's vessel is boarded by massive numbers of troops, and as he presents his "captured" pirates and the "treasure" to the commander of the other vessel, none of the Double Triangle 22s crew is able to converse with Piel, who begins to wander without supervision, encountering amiable native lifeforms. Aboard Jaffar's ship there is congratulation as the docking tube between the two vessels retracts, and they speculate on how long it will take the pirates to take control of the military vessel. The military have overlooked the presence of Belle aboard ship, and in fact only seem interested in the treasure itself, rather than the fugitives.
Realising they have lost contact with Piel, the crew attempt to contact him, but this is now impossible: traveling with his native companion, Piel has lost his transceiver (and his companion) inside a cave filled with predatory hanging tentacles. He wanders, despondent, back to the lakeside, which takes him out of the forest his father had instructed him to stay within.
The Double Triangle 22 closes on her destination, but the planet is being transported through time by a bizarre race of aliens known only as the Masters of Time. Perdide and everything on it, including Piel, is sent back 60 years through time. The effect of time travel means that aboard the approaching Double Triangle 22, the starfield appears to go into flux, and the unprotected crew are knocked unconscious. They awake in a vast space-station, two halves of a bisected sphere the size of a planet, surrounded by a constantly rotating cube described by vast luminous edges. The crew have been treated for exposure to the time-travel area, but Silbad is dying. Yula and Jad, telepathically, reveal how Piel was attacked again by the creatures which killed his mother, losing part of his skull before a passing spacefarer came to his rescue. Silbad, when first describing Perdide to Jaffar and Belle, had revealed a metal plate on his head to repair the damage of this attack, but never demonstrated explicit knowledge of Piel, his parents' death, or time travel. It is now obvious to Jaffar and Belle that Silbad and Piel are one and the same person at different points in their life, which ends shortly thereafter as the unconscious old man dies. He is "buried" in space, and his funeral is observed by one of the Masters of Time; a tall luminous-green biped with a drooping, beak-like snout.
(who were co-producers) aired an English-language
dubbed version in 1987 and 1991 called Time Masters, featuring, amongst others, the voice of Ray Brooks, famous for being the narrator of Mr. Benn.
Several versions have been released on DVD
:
Directed by René Laloux
, the film was produced largely at the PannóniaFilm
studios in Hungary
. The visual design was based on the art of Mœbius
, otherwise known as Jean Giraud.
The motion picture story is based on the novel L'Orphelin de Perdide (1958) by the French writer Stefan Wul
.
In the original novel, the character of Piel was also named Claude, like his father. Laloux changed this to distinguish father and son.
1982 in film
-Events:* March 26 = I Ought to Be in Pictures, starring Walter Matthau, Ann-Margret and Dinah Manoff is released. Manoff would not appear in another movie until 1987's Backfire.* June = PG-rated film E.T...
Franco
Cinema of France
The Cinema of France comprises the art of film and creative movies made within the nation of France or by French filmmakers abroad.France is the birthplace of cinema and was responsible for many of its early significant contributions. Several important cinematic movements, including the Nouvelle...
-Hungarian
Cinema of Hungary
Hungary has had a notable cinema industry from the beginning of the 20th century, with Hungarians who affected the world of motion picture both inside and outside the borders...
animated
Traditional animation
Traditional animation, is an animation technique where each frame is drawn by hand...
science fiction
Space opera
Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in outer space, generally involving conflict between opponents possessing advanced technologies and abilities. The term has no relation to music and it is analogous to "soap...
feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
directed
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
by René Laloux
René Laloux
René Laloux was a French animator and film director.-Biography:He was born in Paris in 1929 and went to art school to study painting. After some time working in advertising, he got a job in a psychiatric institution where he began experimenting in animation with the interns...
and designed
Production designer
In film and television, a production designer is the person responsible for the overall look of a filmed event such as films, TV programs, music videos or adverts. Production designers have one of the key creative roles in the creation of motion pictures and television. Working directly with the...
by Mœbius
Jean Giraud
Jean Henri Gaston Giraud is a French comics artist. Giraud has earned worldwide fame, not only under his own name but also under the pseudonym Moebius, and to a lesser extent Gir, the latter appearing mostly in the form of a boxed signature at the bottom of the artist's paintings, for instance the...
. It is based on the 1958
1958 in literature
The year 1958 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*August 18 - Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita is published in United States.*First volume of The Civil War by Shelby Foote is published....
science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
L'Orphelin de Perdide (The Orphan of Perdide) by Stefan Wul
Stefan Wul
Stefan Wul was the nom de plume of French science fiction writer Pierre Pairault . He was a dental surgeon, but science fiction was his real passion. Most of his books reflect that, showing a deep knowledge of scientific data...
. The film centres around a boy, Piel, who is stranded on Perdide, a desert planet where giant killer hornets live. He awaits rescue by the space pilot Jaffar, the exiled prince Matton, his sister Belle and Jaffar's old friend Silbad who are trying to reach Perdide and save Piel before it is too late.
Plot
Note that this section refers to the English-language dub of Les Maîtres du temps, and certain details may differ from the original.A man named Claude is driving a six-wheeled, insect-like vehicle over the desert surface of Perdide very fast. He attempts to communicate with Jaffar, saying that "they attacked" and that "Annie is dead." After a crash that wrecks his vehicle, he lets his son Piel down from the wreckage; he cannot extricate himself. Piel is too young to comprehend the red and white, ovoid interstellar transceiver that Claude hands him. So Claude tells him that it is named "Mike" and will talk to him, and to do whatever Mike tells him to do, but first to run to a coral-like forest and stay within it. After Piel has reached the forest, the crashed vehicle explodes.
Jaffar is piloting a spacecraft, the Double Triangle 22. He plans to reach Perdide by being pulled along by the gravitational field of the Blue Comet. But he's several planetary systems away, and does not go directly to Perdide or the Blue Comet. Instead he heads for a planet where his friend Silbad resides, as Silbad has experience of living on Perdide. Jaffar's passengers, Prince Matton and his sister, Princess Belle, have been deposed from their planet; they bring with them a treasure the Prince took along to fund his restoration. Matton is not at all happy about being diverted and makes no attempt to hide his displeasure; throughout he is depicted as a lazy, arrogant and deceitful individual.
Each contacts Piel with the transceiver; when they meet Silbad, he sings Piel a song as well, as does the Princess. Whilst on Silbad's planet, they witness the metamorphosis
Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops after birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and differentiation...
of a water-lily like organism into dozens of empathic, sentient, primary colored homunculi, two of whom, named Yula and Jad, stow away on Jaffar's spacecraft seeking adventure. Unknown to the Prince, Yula and Jad play with and then dispose of the treasure via the airlock.
When Matton speaks with Piel, he nearly convinces the trusting boy to drown himself in a lake, but is discovered by Belle, who stuns him with a pistol weapon and talks Piel to safety.
In order to rendezvous with the Blue Comet, Jaffar pilots his craft to the planet Gamma 10. Prince Matton escapes in a shuttlecraft to the surface of Gamma 10, which is inhabited by faceless, identical white male angels. They capture both Matton and Jaffar, who followed in a space lifeboat. The men will be thrown into the living, thinking amorphous being which controls the planet. Although they are unable to rescue Jaffar, Yula and Jad are able to forewarn him of the fate intended for the captives: they are to become one with the controlling being, dominated entirely by it, losing all sense of individuality in the process and becoming one of the angel-beings. They instruct Jaffar to resist being assimilated with all the hate and contempt he can muster. When Jaffar tells the Prince to do so as well, Matton leaps into the being and does so, not only destroying it and the building but causing the skin and wings of all the angels to peel away to reveal that they were originally scruffy spacemen reminiscent of pirates. Rescued from the surface of Gamma 10 by Yula and Jad, the freed captives are taken to the Double Triangle 22, where they are given food and drink, and the presence of their minds cause comical problems for Yula and Jad.
Thereby Jaffar acquires a crew of misfits on the journey to Perdide. Soon afterwards, a patrol cruiser of the Interplanetary Reform catches up with the Double Triangle 22, pursuing the fleeing royals and the treasure the now-deceased Prince stole. Jaffar considers that the 'pirates' from Gamma 10 should be able to hijack the Reform cruiser and take it for themselves. During the discussion of this plan, one of rescued beings from Gamma 10, Onyx the Digeed of Gnaz, is revealed to be able to change his shape to resemble any other object. Onyx will impersonate the missing treasure, allowing the escapees to access the Reformist ship.
Jaffar's vessel is boarded by massive numbers of troops, and as he presents his "captured" pirates and the "treasure" to the commander of the other vessel, none of the Double Triangle 22s crew is able to converse with Piel, who begins to wander without supervision, encountering amiable native lifeforms. Aboard Jaffar's ship there is congratulation as the docking tube between the two vessels retracts, and they speculate on how long it will take the pirates to take control of the military vessel. The military have overlooked the presence of Belle aboard ship, and in fact only seem interested in the treasure itself, rather than the fugitives.
Realising they have lost contact with Piel, the crew attempt to contact him, but this is now impossible: traveling with his native companion, Piel has lost his transceiver (and his companion) inside a cave filled with predatory hanging tentacles. He wanders, despondent, back to the lakeside, which takes him out of the forest his father had instructed him to stay within.
The Double Triangle 22 closes on her destination, but the planet is being transported through time by a bizarre race of aliens known only as the Masters of Time. Perdide and everything on it, including Piel, is sent back 60 years through time. The effect of time travel means that aboard the approaching Double Triangle 22, the starfield appears to go into flux, and the unprotected crew are knocked unconscious. They awake in a vast space-station, two halves of a bisected sphere the size of a planet, surrounded by a constantly rotating cube described by vast luminous edges. The crew have been treated for exposure to the time-travel area, but Silbad is dying. Yula and Jad, telepathically, reveal how Piel was attacked again by the creatures which killed his mother, losing part of his skull before a passing spacefarer came to his rescue. Silbad, when first describing Perdide to Jaffar and Belle, had revealed a metal plate on his head to repair the damage of this attack, but never demonstrated explicit knowledge of Piel, his parents' death, or time travel. It is now obvious to Jaffar and Belle that Silbad and Piel are one and the same person at different points in their life, which ends shortly thereafter as the unconscious old man dies. He is "buried" in space, and his funeral is observed by one of the Masters of Time; a tall luminous-green biped with a drooping, beak-like snout.
Information
The BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
(who were co-producers) aired an English-language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
dubbed version in 1987 and 1991 called Time Masters, featuring, amongst others, the voice of Ray Brooks, famous for being the narrator of Mr. Benn.
Several versions have been released on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
:
- A French edition (ASIN: B00017O6KM, 2 disc collectors edition) which was released in 2004 and has no English subtitles.
- The out of print single disc edition released in the USA in 2000 (ASIN: B00004S8A2) is in French with English subtitles.
- UK distributor Eureka! released a restored, wide-screen and English-subtitled version of the film as part of its Masters of CinemaMasters of CinemaThe Masters of Cinema organization began as a website dedicated to the most well-regarded film directors in the world. Founded by a diverse international group of like-minded film enthusiasts: Jan Bielawski, a mathematician; Doug Cummings, a graphic artist and freelance critic; Trond Trondsen, a Ph.D...
series on October 22, 2007.
Directed by René Laloux
René Laloux
René Laloux was a French animator and film director.-Biography:He was born in Paris in 1929 and went to art school to study painting. After some time working in advertising, he got a job in a psychiatric institution where he began experimenting in animation with the interns...
, the film was produced largely at the PannóniaFilm
PannóniaFilm
Pannonia Film Studio is the largest animation studio in Hungary, based in the capital of Budapest.-History:...
studios in Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
. The visual design was based on the art of Mœbius
Jean Giraud
Jean Henri Gaston Giraud is a French comics artist. Giraud has earned worldwide fame, not only under his own name but also under the pseudonym Moebius, and to a lesser extent Gir, the latter appearing mostly in the form of a boxed signature at the bottom of the artist's paintings, for instance the...
, otherwise known as Jean Giraud.
The motion picture story is based on the novel L'Orphelin de Perdide (1958) by the French writer Stefan Wul
Stefan Wul
Stefan Wul was the nom de plume of French science fiction writer Pierre Pairault . He was a dental surgeon, but science fiction was his real passion. Most of his books reflect that, showing a deep knowledge of scientific data...
.
In the original novel, the character of Piel was also named Claude, like his father. Laloux changed this to distinguish father and son.
External links
- List of DVD releases