'The Prophet' Serves Up Words To Animate By

“The Prophet,” by Lebanese-American poet, Khalil (sometimes spelled Kahlil) Gibran is probably the one book of poetry lurking in American households headed by people over 35. It gets pounced on in garage sales, gifted with great sincerity, enthusiastically quoted, and often misquoted.

Gibran is surpassed only by Shakespeare and Lao-Tze in poetry book sales. Ask people about “The Prophet,” in print since 1923, and an unfocused mysticism suddenly drops into their voices.

And now, the beloved classic has been updated and turned into a 21st century feature length animation that is, in turn, astonishingly beautiful and painfully pedestrian.

Produced by Salma Hayak, herself of Lebanese descent on her father’s side, the film, "The Prophet," is an earnest, family-friendly reframing of Gibran’s spiritual essays. Designed to appeal to parents who have endlessly thumbed their treasured copies, and children brought up on Disney fables, the film is above the heads of the latter and slightly under the attention span of the former.

It may, in fact, be perfect for teenagers who will love the language and animation, and forgive the artificially concocted Disneyesque story that tries to tie Gibran’s essays together.

"The Prophet," directed by Roger Allers ('Aladdin'), embeds eight of Gibran’s essays within the framing story of the friendship of a difficult and emotionally mute child, Almitra (voiced by Quvenzhané Wallis) and a poet, Mustafa (elegantly voiced by Liam Neeson), under house arrest for the crimes of poetry and sedition in an unspecified Mediterranean country -- although the uniforms and attitudes of the military police strongly suggest the waning days of the Ottoman Empire.

Almitra’s widowed mother, Kamila (named for Gibran’s mother and dramatically voiced by Salma Hayek), cleans house for Mustafa and tries to keep her daughter from getting into too much trouble. Eventually, Mustafa is “released” from detention, and escorted by the military police through the town to a waiting boat, stopping to hang out with the admiring townspeople.

In between, Mustafa pauses to give voice to a thoughtful essay that befits the moment — “On Marriage” at a wedding, “On Freedom” when discussing his detention with Almitra, and “On Children” when talking with Kamila.

I’ll spare you the spoiler alert, but let’s just say that anyone who knows modern Middle Eastern politics and letters knows what happens next. In any case, the surrounding story telegraphs it almost from the outset.

With the connecting story so safely average, it just makes the real standouts — the jewels in the setting, so to speak, the animated essays — that more compelling. Hayek has brought together some of the best animators working today and the result is richly varied and stunning.

Each section is interpreted by a different animator, and while the styles may seem widely disparate, they all incorporate elements of Gibran’s paintings and illustrations.

The first break in the predominantly brown-tinted main story is a shock. Polish animator Michal Socha’s “On Freedom” is a visual revelation. Known for his work on “The Simpsons,” Socha’s interpretation of the parable of the birds is both beautiful and thrillingly disquieting as his deeply blue birds become trapped in a walking cage, attached to a tree and then, finally, break free.

After that, the parables come like clockwork, Mustafa’s wise words for every situation.

Nina Paley ("Sita Sings The Blues"), most closely follows Gibran’s text. In “On Children,” Paley uses her signature layering, brilliantly combining North African-inspired changing backgrounds with Indonesian-like articulated shadow puppets and her interpretation of woman as bow spring bringing forth children is gorgeous.

Joan Gratz, American clay painting pioneer, incorporates a surprising amount of Gibran’s own symbolism techniques in her softly flowing lines and colors for “On Work.” Part Van Gogh, part California plein air, Gratz’s style is lyrically bold with a beauty that is breathtaking.

Bill Plympton (whose work has occasionally graced "The Simpsons") opts for pencil drawing that look like a combination of Wayne Thiebaud and underground 1960s iconography for “Eating and Drinking,” while Tomm Moore, Irish illustrator of the "The Book of Kells," draws from Klimt in “On Love.”

One of the more unexpected inclusions is the work of the only Arab artist on the team, Mohammed Saeed Harib from the United Arab Emirates and the Middle East’s first 3D cartoon animator. For “On Good and Evil,” Harib chose to forgo computer animation and instead, spent three years producing Japanese-inspired watercolor frames to great effect.

Unfortunately, these segments leave the main story looking like a visually flat Disney piece with some modicum of cultural sensitivity.

Slightly better than “Aladdin,” the safe shorthand is still there — vaguely crumbling edifices, a mishmash of costumes, off-hand references to things “Arab” (“Stick to Baklava…”), uneven accents. It’s almost as if Allers, who also directed "The Lion King," was channeling "Tintin” with its 2D modeling and deeply colonial undertones.

It's too safely reverential, too unchallenging box office classic material.

And then there’s the music. French-Lebanese composer Gabriel Yared, best known for his soaring scores for "The English Patient" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley," has created an earnest largely minor version of Cat Stevens — a nod, perhaps to the nostalgia of parents in the audience — unhummable, inoffensive, and bland.

Interestingly, there are deeper moments that slip in for those who like a little content with their animation, probably due to Hayek’s Lebanese heritage. Most American readers think of Gibran as a spiritual poet, above the sordid earthly fray, but in the Middle East, he is revered as a literary icon and political rebel.

Allers allows Gibran’s “Pity the Nation” to slip in as justification for Mustafa’s house arrest and end. But like much of the film, there is no context and Gibran’s protest against continued Ottoman occupation of neighboring peoples goes unnoted.

Occasional references slip into the animated essays as well. In “On Marriage,” the couple breaks a wine glass and then dances barefoot on the shards, while the menace of the "Occupy" Guy Fawkes masks in “On Love” amplifies as the film moves on.

But these are tiny moments and for the most part, "The Prophet" is Gibran-lite, with the animated essays providing relief from the cuddly, predictable framing story.

That said, if you can let the main story go (to paraphrase "Frozen"), Gibran’s animated essays are worth sitting through the rest.

“The Prophet” runs Aug. 14 through 20 at Landmark's Ken Cinema.