Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet

The movie is made as an impression of Ghibran... and when you talk about truth, its hard to find any person who gets acquainted with it. Now instead when u start visualizing truth it finds itself in a difficult position to present itself in a understandable format and this film does it perfectly ... Oh my .. i couldn't control my tears in the end of the film not that its emotional but the expression of truth always gets answered without the senses ... thanks to the director who felt in his heart to make Ghibran on the screen and i am debt to him my lifetime for just this... The best presentation of Ghibran till date.. Truth is always ONE... it just takes our time to realize it, coz its always there and we just don't see it ...

source: Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet

The movie is made as an impression of Ghibran... and when you talk about truth, its hard to find any person who gets acquainted with it. Now instead when u start visualizing truth it finds itself in a difficult position to present itself in a understandable format and this film does it perfectly ... Oh my .. i couldn't control my tears in the end of the film not that its emotional but the expression of truth always gets answered without the senses ... thanks to the director who felt in his heart to make Ghibran on the screen and i am debt to him my lifetime for just this... The best presentation of Ghibran till date.. Truth is always ONE... it just takes our time to realize it, coz its always there and we just don't see it ...

Usually I am a little annoyed on a lengthy animation, but I would look at every frame of this movie. Sublime and so surreal. The blend of a Disney movie with the air of unreal imaginable art. A classic not to be missed. Clearly these directors are artist. Duh, what are directors but artist, and artist, directors, but the vision given to this film is high! The details, the movement, the colors gave me such a rush. Having read the book many many times, I appreciated the visuals. I loved this movie, as you can see. Kudos to the actors for keeping an amazing pace and flow to the story. So,what else can you say about a masterpiece. Either the theater propped it or there was a serial type promo at the beginning of the movie gave it that nostalgic feel, like a Disney movie. However I did see it in classic theater in Beverly Hills gave me that classic glory days feel of filmdom. See it!

You have to be in the right mood for this film. It is more about poetry than plot. So, if you are in a reflective mood, the images, music and words may weave a magic. I was not, so I struggled with staying awake, and filed it away for another time. Great voice cast. Clever visual presentation of the poetry. My experience of this film was a 5 (meh) out of 10. I couldn't stay awake to finish it. {Animated Poetry}

beautiful.delicate. not surprising but precious as support of memories. touching. nice. a well known book who obtains a decent animation who translates, with grace, an universe. fascinating for its simplicity, it is a poem in image, a small drama, definition of emotions, hope, the things who defines each life, becoming its purpose. not great. but useful. for the not complicated story who preserves its universal message. for the basic drawing. for the splendid remember of truth in lovely manner. a portrait of life. a tale about freedom and dreams. and about the source of happiness. a film far to be special. but interesting. for the status of window to yourself.

A beautiful little animated film based on the poetry of Kahlil Gibran. The film doesn't, as I supposed, reflect the actual life of Gibran in its plot, nor does it depict the plot of the original book in its main storyline. That was created for the film. A poet named Mustafa (voiced by Liam Neeson) is being held under house arrest for his writings, which the government fears are an incitement to revolution. He is set to be released, and is led through the town toward a ship on which he will leave. As he goes through town, he converses with people and speaks the poetry of the original work. Over this poetry, several different animators (the most famous of whom are Nina Paley, Bill Plympton and Tomm Moore) interpret the text with their own animations. The wraparound segment, directed by The Lion King's Roger Allers, is CGI of the type seen in the Disney short Paperman. It's a little clunky, but it's pretty. The central character of the film is a little mute girl named Almitra (when she finally does speak, as one might expect she does, she is voiced by Quvenzhane Wallis), who follows Mustafa on his trip through the town. She's extremely cute and well animated. Her mother is played by Selma Hayek, who is largely responsible for the project in the first place. John Krasinski, Alfred Molina and Frank Langella also co-star. The animated segments are mostly abstract, and mostly pretty great. I saw the film mostly for the Tomm Moore segment. It's hard to pick a favorite. Perhaps Joann Sfar's segment, which is of a tango over the poem "On Marriage." Definitely recommended.

In terms of film, there is a difference between an anthology and a collective set of work. Trick r Treat and The Twilight Zone: The Movie are anthology movies as each have a story is somewhat connected to the next and have reoccurring characters that might meet up. Fantasia is the prime example of a series of collected works. The same team may have been behind all the shorts, but they weren't meant to be published as a flowing set. Nothing about Fantasia's stories would confuse people into thinking that "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and "The Nutcracker Suite" would be connected. Each story of Fantasia is it's own thing and is simply within the film because the filmmaker has chosen to put it in there. One reason we don't see a lot of collective works set to one film is that a lot of people come to a movie to escape into one long story. That's not to say that there are people that like a set of short stories, but it's been proved by the studio system that a mainstream audience wants to see safer content. While you might find short film series' in a film festival, The Prophet is a collected work of artistic expression. In a village within an unnamed middle eastern country, young speechless Almitra (played by Quvenzhané Wallis) is considered a trouble maker by her village as she is a compulsive thief and can make bird noises that allow her to communicate with seagulls. Her mother Kamila (played by Salma Hayek) tries to keep her under control now that she is a single mother (the fathers death is said to be the cause of Almitra loosing her speech) and working at a political prison. Finding school uninteresting, Almitra follows her mother to work and finds someone special behind a gate. She finds an older but kind man Mustafa (played by Liam Neeson) who is an artist and a writer who has spent seven years under political arrest for writing controversial content that detest's the government. Mustafa and Almitra bond as the latter expresses his thoughts on life, love and freedom, as shown by segmented shorts that are usually just artsy expression of his essays. Two guardsmen (played by Alfred Molina and john Krasinski) are responsible for taking him to a ship that can return the artist to his home country, but the people may not be ready for him to leave. Part of me really wanted to love The Prophet as it's rare to see a hand drawn animated movie and it really has passion for the essays as written by Lebenon artist Kahlil Gibran. The shorts are well done and look beautiful. It almost felt like that I was watching Fantasia again. But there's a problem; the movie tries to put them into a narrative. I have nothing against this idea, but the movie's perspective is through the child and not the artist. This means that the story is simple and has been created as an attempt to be family entertainment. The content is tame, but I would think that most kids would find much of the artistic expression really boring. What's weird is that I have nothing wrong with the actual story of a girl bonding with the artist and a village coming together as one. The voice acting is great and the animation looks nice. When the main narrative and the shorts are separated, their both magnificent. But when put together, it's tone is inconsistent, never finding a ground that can attract both children and adults. Given I'm conflicted, I'll give this four collected works of Kahlil Gibran out of five purely on an artistic level. As inconsistent as the setting is, I still recommend the movie simple for it's animation. I'd say only see this if you really want to see another rare hand drawn movie.

Having seen Disney & animated movies since childhood in Bombay , I was expecting something different. I have had the book sine 1988 which was given as a gift and having read it many times over , I should have visualized it to be different. But I was so dumbstruck after it was finished that I Couldn,t stop crying and the feeling of joy I felt. The entire film was based on the excellent Animation, combining 2-3 different ones combined to make this a masterpiece . Yet nowhere is the name Bardel Animation Colouring House been once mentioned. I am delighted that the names of the Animators were put. The tears were for the hardworking CEO & VICE PRESIDENT of Bardel who lifted the work on their shoulders when others though it could not be done, we're not once mentioned. The feeling of joy was what a MOTHER feels to see what her daughter has achieved through the hard work and self discipline. I saw it on the Premier night. Hope to see it soon again.

The movie is an adaptation, so it must be judged as an adaptation meaning separate Gibran's work and judge the movie on its ability to complement the original text. Plot 0/10: The original book had a very loose plot that exists solely to allow Almustafa to switch from topic to topic. It's usually something like "And so-and-so said, 'Speak to us of blank.'" and then Almustafa talks about whatever. So the movie chose to make those segments longer, throw in some conflicts, romance, jokes, and standard archetypes. I'm guessing it was an effort to make the movie appealing to a wider audience, but it failed miserably. Nearly every plot item that was thrown into this movie was complete garbage, even Almitra's arc made me annoyed because it felt lifted from GKIDS's Song of the Sea (which really deserved an Oschar). The humor feels like something taken out of a really crappy children's movie. I've seen people calling this movie 'Art Film', but it's not. Fantasia is art film and this movie could have been but it tried to reach an audience that would never appreciate this movie and alienated the real audience. I somewhat agree with the people who call this a kids movie, because it was seriously dumbed down. I know 0/10 seems harsh but there is seriously nothing positive to say about the plot, excluding the source. Animation 6/10: There's been a trend to use 3D with toon shaders to create a traditional animation look and it's something that still doesn't quite work. The backdrops on this movie are fantastic, but there's something revolting about 3D motion and shadows that can't be fixed without a Disney scale budget, and toon shaders only make shadows worse. The 3D is painful there were several instances where I had to look away because it was so darn awful. I also saw quite a few animation errors particularly involving clipping and eye motion. The shorts that are actually based on The Prophet tend to be better and they are all very different from each other which is nice, but this also causes varying levels of quality. Fortunately for every bad short there's a really amazing short and overall it's decent. If the movie was just the shorts I would recommend it. Acting 5/10: I'm usually really impressed with the actors GKIDS can pull. Their Ghibli work is fantastic and Song of the Sea had some really strong actors, but this movie was just disappointing. Liam Neeson did a fantastic job, but was held back by the animation, the secondary character were pretty standard for an animation movie especially the government workers, but the biggest disappointment was Quvenzhané Wallis who is one the few decent child actors but doesn't quite live up here. Her first line was pretty decent (but that's largely due to the buildup), but after that she's just another child actor who doesn't quite know how to act in an animated movie.