‘Dead Times’: René Laloux animates the history of violence
Since the conception of cinema, animation has been an incredibly effective medium to communicate ideas that require a different kind of visual power. Ranging from sociopolitical issues to ecological calamities, some of the greatest animated films have tackled difficult subjects in unique ways and have contributed to significant changes in the public consciousness. Among the pioneers who changed the art form forever, René Laloux will always have a special place.
Born in Paris, Laloux’s education was rooted in the study of art, and he actually received training in painting at his art school before working in the advertising industry. Interestingly, his journey as an animator developed in a psychiatric institution where he played around with various techniques and ran them by the interns. Due to this strange background, Laloux’s approach to animation managed to stand out from his contemporaries in striking ways.
Of course, the film he is most known for is the 1973 masterpiece Fantastic Planet, often regarded as one of the greatest cinematic achievements of the 20th century. An overwhelmingly potent allegory about colonisation and humanity’s inherent drive to dominate, Fantastic Planet imagines a world where an alien species treat humans as inferior animals. Laloux’s politico-philosophical thoughts can be traced back to his earlier works, especially the 1964 short Dead Times.
Dead Times marked the first collaboration between Laloux and the brilliant French illustrator Roland Topor who also worked on Fantastic Planet. Featuring an interesting mixture of war footage and surreal drawings of the human condition, Dead Times conducts an anthropological study of our civilisation and tries to understand the psychology of violence that has plagued us since the very beginning while reflecting on our trajectory.
The images of death and destruction are complemented by engaging commentary, which grabs the viewer’s attention. In the film, the narrator introduces our world like this: “Somewhere, in a sparsely populated galaxy, there is a planet like any other. The creatures of this world have four limbs. The two lower limbs enable them to move forward and backwards, and the two upper limbs enable them to kill. Man. Principle resource: Death. He lives by it. He even dies by it.”
Laloux points out the hypocrisy embedded in the structures that govern us, insisting that the way in which our society controls and regulates violence is through state-sanctioned violence. The narrator remarks: “Even if man continues to commit crimes, justice will prevail. The killers judge the killers, and the dead rise to offer their executioners’ heads to other executioners. The world is, in fact, a vicious circle.” Although Dead Times is obviously not as polished as Laloux’s most iconic collaboration with Topor, it’s a fascinating collection of precursors.
Watch the film below.
