He
was born into a Maronite Catholic family and wrote his best known work in
English, but Kahlil Gibran was subsequently embraced as a symbol of Arab
culture. Without question, his best known work is The Prophet, arguably the original break-out New Age bestseller, whose
celebrity admirers include Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and Salma Hayek. Her
regard for the instantly recognizable Knopf title was such that she produced a
big screen animated adaptation of the book few would have thought adaptable. The
ambition and animation are definitely impressive, but the source material remains
unwieldy in Roger Allers’ Kahlil Gibran’s
The Prophet (trailer
here),
which screens during this year’s New York International Children’s Film Festival.
In
order to give the film a central storyline, Allers took some liberties with the
framing device. The exiled prophet Mustafa (here more of a hipster painter and
poet) is indeed bidding a fond farewell to the citizens of Orphalese, but he
will not simply hop on the tall ship and sail off into the sunset. The
oppressive Pasha and his thuggish police sergeant are planning permanent
measures to halt his progressive influence before they let him go anywhere. The
resulting narrative is like a weird passion play, with the assorted peasants in
the countryside and merchants in town celebrating his presumed release with
much feasting and drinking. At each stop along the way, Mustafa gives the crowd
a pithy bit of prose poetry wisdom that are impressionistically rendered by a
diverse roster of animators.
No
longer is Almitra a seer. She is now the rebellious mute daughter of Kamila,
the widowed housekeeper hired to tidy up the prophet’s exile cottage. Sharing a
connection with the island’s seagulls, she is the first to suspect the fate
awaiting Mustafa. Presumably, these liberties taken with the text pass muster
with the Gibran establishment, given their active role in the production.
Regardless,
the film as a whole is necessarily uneven, since Allers and Hayek-Pinault (as
she is billed here) deliberately embrace its episodic structure. Not
surprisingly, the best sequences are “On Love” animated by Tomm Moore (Song of the Sea) and “On Marriage”
crafted by Joann Sfar (The Rabbi’s Cat).
The abstract nature of the texts are also particularly well suited to the
styles of Nina Paley (Sita Sings the Blues) and Bill Plympton (Cheatin’).
However, the other four parables largely blend together.
Following
in the footsteps of Richard Harris’s Arif Mardin-produced musical interpretation
of The Prophet, Liam Neeson continues
the Irish Gibran tradition as the voice of Mustafa. To be fair, his husky,
reassuring tones are rather well suited to the film. Hayek-Pinault is perfectly
serviceable as Kamila. (Since she is once again playing a mother facing difficult
circumstances, Prophet should really
be considered a companion film to Everly and
the two should be screened together whenever possible). Quvenzhané Wallis gets
precious little actual dialogue as Almitra (but perhaps that is just as well),
while Alfred Molina does his best to keep up with the slapstick humor directed
at his pompous Sergeant.
