“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
This quotation has been one of the most famous lines that you can get from the novel The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Actually, this novel became the topic of our entire Values Education Class in my senior year in high school.
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I got excited to have a copy of the film when I knew that there is a movie with the same title. At first I thought it was a direct adaptation of the novel but it was not. It was about the girl who befriended an old aviator who wrote the story The Little Prince.
Here is the plot of the story:
The mother of the girl wanted her to enroll in one of the prestigious school, Werth Academy. With so much determination to let her daughter pass the examination, she made a very tight schedule on summer break making small time for leisure.
The daughter started to get distraction when the propeller of the old man’s plane hit their house and creates damages.
One day, while having a study, a paper plane landed on her table. It was the first part of the story about the “little prince”. At first, she had no interest in reading the story until she saw a drawing of a box with three holes where the sheep of the “little prince” is sleeping.
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| Screenshot: The Aviator and The Little Prince |
She gains interest in knowing the complete story. She secretly peeked into the old man’s house and asked the old man to continue telling the story of the aviator who had a plane accident in a desert and encountered a boy who came from a distant asteroid.
The story continues about the boy who encountered different planets with different residents like a king, a businessman, a conceited man and lastly the earth where he met the aviator, the fox, the snake and lots of roses. The little prince is searching about what he believes to be the only rose in the universe – his rose, where he left in his planet under a glass globe to protect it from wind and cold.
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| Screenshot: The Little Prince and The Fox |
On the girl’s birthday, together with the aviator, had a near car accident. When her mother knew about the friendship of the two, she was grounded and was instructed to focus on her studies again. But the girl was very eager to determine the ending of the story and she secretly return to the aviators home. She learned that the little prince sacrificed himself to a venomous snake in order to return to his planet and reunites with his rose. The girl went upset of the ending and regrets meeting the old man.
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| The girl and the old man |
As the summer ends, the old man gets hospitalized. The girl wanted to make an apology by finding the little prince using the aviator’s plane. She landed on an asteroid exclusively for adults who all works for the star-collecting businessman. She found the prince who became an adult and works as a janitor under the name Mr. Prince. The prince forgets all about his past.
The girl then forced the prince to return to his asteroid that us now grown with baobab trees. His rose is still under the glass globe but already died. They saw a rising sun with an image of a rose. From there, the prince went back to a young boy again. The girl flew back to earth with the help of a flock of birds.
The girl and her mother visited the aviator in the hospital where the little girl gave a compilation of the aviator’s complete story of The Little Prince.
The summer ends and the little girl started her school at Werth Academy. She also had a better relationship with her mother and they gaze thru the stars where they heard the laughter of the aviator and the little prince.
The last part of the movie is not derived from the original novel. It is also not stated nor shown if the little girl’s journey to the asteroid of adults is a reality or just a dream. Nevertheless, the movie is great.
Have you watched this animated film or read the novel too?