Gandahar

Gandahar’s subtle sexual imagery

Gandahar is a French animated science fiction film from 1987 in which the denizens of a New Wave sci fi-style ecotopia are turned into statues by robot invaders from the future who travel through time at the behest of a giant glans.  And Isaac Asimov did script revisions for the English translation.

Set in a world ruled over by Ambisextra and the Council of Women, Gandahar plays out like a bizarre splice of Heavy Metal and the Female Man; ostensibly a utopia ruled by women, the film features a lot of gratuitous nudity, weak female love interests and strangely forced sexual imagery.  Throw in some visual references to Barbarella, and it becomes increasingly difficult to decide if the film is intended to be a light-hearted, slightly raunchy romp, or if the animators merely though sexual imagery everywhere made the film ‘arty.’

The Deformed find Sylvian

Leaving aside the plot momentarily, it’s worth noting that Gandahar is fairly well animated.  The characters can seem a bit too static at times, and the backgrounds can sometimes look a bit flat, but the alien world evoked is often colurful and strange, reminscent of the kind of cover illustrations that plagued ’70s sci fi novels despite having nothing to do with the contents.  Particularly impressive are the Deformed, a genetically manipulated race of mutants with spare or missing limbs, stretched faces and multiple sets of eyes.  Primitive and odd-looking, they are nonetheless portrayed with some depth, and not simply used as the grotesque pariahs you might expect them to be.  Indeed, they are arguably the true heroes of the film, and show a patience and kindness completely unlike their horrible exteriors, helping the hero despite the fact it is the scientists of Gandahar who are to blame for creating them.

It is this moral quandry that is the most interesting thing about Gandahar – our generic hero, Sylvian, has no sense of past, nor do any of the other Gandaharians.  Instead, they mill about in the constant present, enjoying their utopia while the Deformed struggle and the Men of Metal attack.  They ignore their responsibility towards their creations, and it is this which allows Metamorphis, another Gandaharian creation, to itself create the Men of Metal.  Because of this it is hard to believe the Gandaharians deserve to be saved, and the film falls somewhat flat.  We could perhaps care for the Deformed, but Sylvian seems as self-absorbed and lazy as the rest of his people, and as a hero does little more than provide a blank male figure for adolescent minds to project on as he engages in sex at ridiculous times.

It seems odd that Asimov worked on the English script for Gandahar, as the plot’s convoluted message of scientific responsibility and it’s ecotopia setting feel very much the product of the New Wave (the novel upon which the film is based was published in 1969.)  However, the film is a product of its own time, and seems to be aimed at the same audience as 1981’s Heavy Metal, caring more for nudity and lax sexual attitudes than maintaining a narrative.  Despite this, Gandahar enjoys an undeserved cult status, presumably among its original pubescent target audience, now grown enough to feel the need to make excuses about its thin plot.