The Time Masters

Not much to say about the moviegoing experience up here because I mostly want to have a review up during the week it's at the Brattle in a pretty great-looking restoration.


Les Maîtres du temps ([The] Time Masters)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2024 in the Brattle Theatre (special engagement, 4K laser DCP)
Available to rent/purcase on Prime and perhaps elsewhere

My eyes bugged a bit at the trailer for The Time Masters when it played before another film at the Brattle a week or two ago - cool animated French sci-fi, looks a bit more accessible than Fantastic Planet, and, man those designs look like they could come straight from a Jodorowsky & Moebius… oh, wait, it actually is Moebius! How in the heck is this restoration 40 years later somehow the first real US release? Well, it turns out that it's a lot of ideas and not a lot of story; not really a drag, but not all one might hope.

It opens in zippy enough fashion, with a spindly wheeled vehicle racing across an alien planet, driver Claude (voice of Sady Rebbot) making an interstellar plea to a friend; his wife has been killed by the planet Perdide's murderous hornets and they need to be evacuated. Crashing in an area presumed to be safe, the dying man gives his transceiver to his five-year-old son Piel (voice of Frédéric Legros), saying to hide in the woods and do whatever the voice that comes out says; Piel doesn't quite understand that it will be someone far away talking to him, and not the device itself. On the other end, Claude's adventurer friend Jaffar (voice of Jean Valmont) doesn't get the message right away; he's been hired to smuggle Prince Matton (voice of Yves-Marie Maurin) and Princess Belle (voice of Monique Thierry) and half the royal treasury to a new world after Matton was deposed, but immediately makes plans: He will have to consult with old friend Silbad (voice of Michel Elias), an expert on Perdide, and use the gravity of the Blue Comet to make his way there. Along the way, they pick up a couple of telepathic gnomes (voices of Patrick Baujin & Pierre Tourneur) as stowaways - they don't like the smell of Matton's thoughts - and try to keep a scared child safe as they don't know exactly what he is up to.

That opening is terrific, a fast-paced dash across a thoroughly alien landscape with enough great Moebius designs to make one's eyes pop anew every few seconds augmented by a cool, synthy score, and director René Laloux (co-writing with Moebius, who also does the art design) isn't exactly shy about trying to build the entire movie on this feeling: When things start to drag, get on a new spaceship, go to a new planet, or have Piel discover some new piece of Perdide life that can grab a viewer's attention, and hang around that until it's time to do this again. It's the same principle that Moebius often brought to his science-fictional bandes dessinées, and his style works exceptionally well here: He's a perfect blend of cartooning and grit under most circumstances, but given a space mercenary trying to rescue a frightened child, it's even better, especially as the innocent antics of the gnomes on Jaffar's ship and the ominous creatures surrounding Piel tie the whole universe together.

You maybe need a little more than that, though: After that exciting opening, there really isn't a lot for anybody to do; there are a few bursts of activity, but a lot of time spent observing and explaining as opposed to doing, and that has its limits, even with as much nifty stuff to observe as this movie offers. It's not necessarily a surprise that the actual Time Masters don't show up - or even get mentioned! - until almost the very end of the film, although there are a couple comments toward the end that make me wonder if I'd missed a reference looking at scenery rather than subtitles. Still, it's not uncommon for French sci-fi to drop the audience into a weird milieu and half-explain it later. Stranger, though, is that there are at least two or three major sequences that happen off-screen or at the other end of the communicator, which you shouldn't have to do in animation.

And maybe Laloux had intended to, but couldn't because of what a fraught production this could be: The French producers outsourced much of the actual animation to a Hungarian firm, and by all accounts the two groups did not get on well at all and collectively were not up to the challenges this movie faced; they maybe just couldn't animate a large, complex action scene given the resources available; even simple facial work and motion is often stiff. Backgrounds, design, and a few big moments are fantastic, at least; what could be done was executed with incredible love and skill.

Which is why, in a few months, I'll buy this on the fanciest disc its distributor makes available and pull it out when I'm in the mood for something mildly trippy and easy to follow; it's fantastic when it's on target and isn't going to frustrate at 78 minutes.