I found this movie on Netflix during a rainy day. The cover and the synopsis looked promising, so I decided to give it a try. I went in feeling calm, I came out feeling very emotional.
"The Little Prince" is an animated film that was released in 2015 and was directed by Mark Osborne. It was based off the book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry published in 1943 during World War II. This story had impacted my heart in my ways, and I was touched by the things that the film had presented.
"The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched,
they are felt with the heart."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "The Little Prince"
The story begins with a girl living in a hectic life, being pushed by her mother to stick to a "life plan" that dictates her every move for every minute of her life. However, the girl is distracted by an aviator who tells her the story of The Little Prince and his encounters with him.
There are three acts to the story:
The first story builds off as a framing device. The main characters, a little girl, is being molded into the perfect adult with a set "life plan" and being a child prodigy. During a day at home, a propeller flies into her house, causing lots of damage. The culprit turned out to be an old man who used to be an aviator in his younger days. As an apology, he starts sending pages of the story about a little prince to the girl. Each day, the girl becomes more and more distracted with the story, so she starts to visit him to hear more remnants of the story.
The second story follows the life events of the little prince - which the old man narrates. The little prince lives alone on a planet, but he encounters a rose. The rose begins to ask him of his needs, but the prince did not know how to comprehend his feelings for her even though he loved her. So he flew away with a pack of birds. This began a journey that led the prince to encounter inhabitants of other planets and eventually come to Earth.
First, he meets a king who holds order over the stars but condemns insubordination. Second, he meets a conceited man who is only attentive to his own vanity but is the only man who had existed on the planet. Third, he meets a workaholic who is only concerned with being rich in wealth and selfish gains. This leads the prince to think that "grown-ups are very, very odd."
Then he comes to meet a fox and an aviator. The fox is untamed but grows to like the little prince after learning the boy had a kind heart that no one else had. Over time, the fox and the prince spend time with each other - growing into a very strong friendship. However, it is broken when the prince encounters other roses that reminds him of the one that he had abandoned. The fox tells him that he must return to the planet. Therefore, the prince leaves in search of it. He comes to meet the aviator, during the younger days - quite possibly during World War II. The aviator is startled by the prince's appearance but grew to like him after the prince's strange ways of dealing with harsh realities taught the aviator to appreciate the minuscule details in life.
Once the story had finished, the prince grows homesick and leaves the aviator, unknown to the aviator where he had really went. During the film, we learn that the prince had been on earth
The third act begins to start once the girl learns that she has to reunite the little prince with his rose and restore his planet back to normal.
In conclusion, the story ends with the little prince being returned to his home planet. As for the girl and the aviator, the girl had come to the terms that things in life may not last forever and what was really important was accepting the changes in her life as she was growing up. The third act turned out to be an interpretation that the girl had to accept the old aviator's death as a fact of life as he had a cough that prevented him from doing his hobbies.
This movie is filled with quotes and characters that symbolize a lot of the things that we face in life today. Each of the characters had their own personalities, which defined the way that the world worked through one's perspective. After rewatching this film, I had to think twice about how I was living my life and how it impacted those around me.
One quote that impacted me the most was this:
In the movie, the fox leaves this quote as a secret to the prince before the prince left the fox to return to his home planet. This quote made the prince realize that even though the other roses that were the same as each other, his rose was still his own because he had loved it unconditionally. So his love for the rose made his heart turn back to her, giving him a desire to return home and take care of her.
This quote made me realize that the people I loved were very special to me, just as the prince felt that the rose was special to him. Each day in our life, we pass many people that we don't know or are familiar with. For the ones that we are familiar with, we don't say that we appreciate them for being in our lives. Nor are we grateful for encountering people that have changed our lives whether it is big or small.
As for the different people that the prince encountered on his trip away from the rose, we should learn that conforming to what the world wants of us doesn't make us better in the long run. Even though we have expectations that we should be proper, maintain dignity at a high level, have excellent grades that skyrocket through the roof or speak diligently, we forget that we can be creative and unique in our own way. When the little prince came to earth, he lost the qualities that defined himself: innocence, love and compassion. But the girl made him realize that his love for the rose was what he had lacked all along.
"The Little Prince" is an astounding film that taught me that we should be grateful and show appreciation to the people who are in our lives. As the girl had learned during her relationship with the aviator, nothing really lasts forever. So we should take the time to show love towards the people that are in our lives.
The essentials that are invisible to the common eye is what strengthens us for now and in the future.
