All language subtitles for Invisible.Essence-The.Little.Prince.2018.1080p.WEBRip.x264-RARBG.eng

Vision is
the most important
of the human senses.

Right now as you
watch these light rays
striking the magnified eyes,

similar tiny beams of light
are entering your own eyes.

And it's by our eyes
that we're able to gain
a great part of our knowledge.

If we both closed our eyes,

we wouldn't be able to make
those snap judgments
about each other based on

what we're wearing
or what our age is.

Whether we're able-bodied
or not.

Hello, Reminder Rosie.

Privileging those
invisible riches like

love, and trust, and tolerance,

would be a pretty good place
to start.

So, I wanna ask you,
how are you doing with your
Braille reading and writing?

Good.

So, I think we should
start the Braille club.

What do you think?

What shall we call it?

Yeah, we'll have to
think of a good title
for this club, right?

Um... Cool Kids Club.

"Cool Kids Club"? Okay.

Hey, maybe we can teach
Duchess Braille as well.

-Yeah, we can get her.
-What do you think?

We can get her out.

And she can sit
right beside us.

That'll be great.
We'll have Duchess
in the Braille club, too.

I've never had a raccoon
in the Braille club.

-This is going to
be cool, right?

I'm gonna
show you a book today

called Le Petit Prince.

And if we open this up,

this is where the Braille is.

We're gonna put both hands
on the very top line.

Get all those fingers
to touch the Brailles.

I just want you to follow
that line across the page.

And what do we do when we
get to the end of the line

and want to go to the next one?

Yeah, you bring
your left hand across
and the right hand follows.

Where is it?

A little bit higher.

I'm not sure you can ever

adequately explain the magic
of The Little Prince
that distinguish it

among Saint-Exupery's work
and among other books.

As with all great classics,
it's a book that changes
every time you read it.

I know that I came to it,
as many of us do,

thinking of it
as a children's book.

You read it
at some points of your life,

with starry-eyed idealism,
and at other times

read it as a metaphor
or as an allegory.

It shimmers
in and out of sight.

It's been translated
in over 200 languages.

The numbers are staggering.

Apart from the bible,
there's no other example

of a book that has
been read by

so many people from
different languages, cultures.

There are so many books
and so many tales
and so many myths.

And this seems to
transcend them all.

Why? Why is it...

Why this huge success?

"Once, when I was six,

I saw a magnificent picture

in a book about the jungle,
called True Stories.

It showed a Boa constrictor
swallowing a wild beast."

The book begins with an act
of violence.

But is also begins
with our narrator, the pilot,

inspired, to try to create
something himself.

"And after I did some work
with a color pencil,

I was able to make
my first drawing.
My drawing number one.

It looks something like this.

I showed my masterpiece
to grown-ups and asked them
if the drawing scared them.

But they answered, 'Scared?
Why will anyone
be scared of a hat?'"

"Since the grown-ups
didn't understand what it was,

I made another drawing.

I drew the inside
of a Boa constrictor

so that the grown-ups
could see it clearly.

You always have to
explain things to them."

The beginning
of the book, which is
so enormously charming,

it begins with the aviator's
exasperated conundrum
about the elephant,

the Boa constrictor
and the hat.

That's where the story begins
'cause that tell us
what the story is about.

It's about the failure
of imagination
in the grown-up world.

The magic suitcase.

And this book was how
I repitched the story.

Gave it a chance for people
to see what a stop motion
puppet looked like.

I always looked at it as
we're not replacing the book,

we're celebrating the book.

We were trying to tap into
what was really

powerful in the book

for so many people.

There's even a quote
that was a headline for us.

The aviator says,
"I do not want my story
to be taken lightly."

I lived my life alone,

without anyone that I could
really talk to until I had
an accident with my plane

on the desert of Sahara.

I was more isolated
than a shipwrecked sailor

on a raft in the middle of
the ocean.

As you can imagine
my amazement at sunrise,

when I was awaken by
an odd little voice.

If you please,

draw me a sheep.

He's not asking
for a drink of water.

He's not asking for money.
He's not asking for
the nearest train station.

He wants

a work of the imagination.

That is what he's calling for.

And the pilot does his best
to comply.

The fourth drawing,
he draws a box.

The sheep you asked for
is inside.

And the pilot knows
what's inside.

And The Little Prince
knows what's inside.

Because they share that ability
to see what is invisible.

That's perfect.

Exactly the way I wanted it.

It is?

I always saw the aviator

as someone in despair

who arranged the accident
in the desert

in search of meditation.

At the moment

flower of his spirit appeared

and that's The Little Prince.

The aviator, little prince,

the way that they interact,

I always thought
they were the same person.

This man who is dangerously
close to death in the desert...

Draw me a sheep.

And he's having this
weird hallucination dream.

How did you... Ah.

It's a meeting of the adult
and the child.

He tries to create

the ideal of man's life,

which means
that the child he was

and the man he now is,

hold hands.

The story begins when

the two lost souls
find each other.

Saint-Exupery sat his nieces
and nephew on his knee

and told stories about meeting
a little prince in the desert.

And these nieces and nephews
in their 90s,

still believe to this day
those same stories
that they were told.

The entire book
is built on a vision

of this little prince

who asks questions
that are rarely asked

by children that age.

Where is he from?

Where is he going?

[Schiff speaks English]
Saint-Exupery traveled
immensely and knew

something about
the universality of nuttiness.

And was able to really
translate all of that

into a very simple
distilled tale.

And I think, that too
is unusual
for someone to have seen

so many of the oddities
of the world,

and to have realized
how constant they were
across the board.

You know, I think the reason
why a story becomes

universal and timeless,

when something
is also personal.

I think it's the story
of his own life.

Reading it, I want to know
who Saint-Exupery was

because I feel like
I know him emotionally.

I just don't know him
personally.

He was born in 1900.

And grows up
in a chateau outside Lyon.

His father dies young,
so he's brought up
really by a single mother,

in a family of siblings
where he

seems to think himself
anyway the favorite child.

And he is
a bit of an inventor child.

He's someone who does
experiments in the bath tub.

Or attaching the wings
to the bicycle.

He writes poetry
at a very early age.

And he really romanticizes
the house, the family.

He says, "I will always
be the child of that house."

So it's a very tight family
in which he is clearly
a little bit of the eccentric,

and very much tolerated
by his
equally creative siblings.

Um, but he's marked
in some ways by early loss.

The death of his father
was the first step

in a painful
and melancholic existence.

A life detached
by the death of the father.

One could say
that Saint-Exupery's life,
symbolically,

is a permanent quest
to return to childhood.

My little man,
where do you come from?

What is this?

Where I live, what you speak.

Where do you
want to take your sheep?

But where do you think
he would go?

Anywhere,
straight ahead of him.

That doesn't matter.

Where I live
everything is so small.

Straight ahead.

Nobody can go very far.

There is this power
within adults,

myself included,

which wants to be done
with childhood.

Because we want to be done
with ignorance.

Done with uncertainty.

Done with doubt.

[in English] The lovely thing
about children

is that they expose
themselves

on all levels easily and well.

But we begin to have
layers and layers of that,

uh, you know, covering us.

We lose our innocence.

We become self-conscious.

You have to grow up.
You can't stop the clock.

But we were all once kids.

And no matter what's happened
to you as a grown-up,

you have this ability to tap
back into that more innocent,
more pure

time in your life.

It's about remembering that
and staying connected to that.

Saint-Exupery is sort of
child man in many ways.

There's an innocence
that trails him around.

Which many of us outgrow
and he never did.

And that leads to endless
disappointments in his life.

He's always at odds
with the practical world.

And many of the people
whom he parodies
in The Little Prince,

are the people with whom
he was at odds over the years

because they expected him to

be an adult and arrive on time
and fulfill his obligations

and pay attention
to the stupidities
of the world,

like, you know, how many
stars there were in the sky.

So, as opposed to
appreciating the beauty
of the stars in the sky.

[The Aviator] I had thus
learned a second fact
of great importance.

This was that the planet
The Little Prince came from

was scarcely any larger
than a house.

I have serious reason
to believe

that the planet from
which The Little Prince came

is the asteroid known as B-612.

This asteroid has been seen
only once by telescope,

in 1909

by a Turkish astronomer.

He made a formal demonstration

of his discovery at
an International
Astronomical Congress.

But no one had believed him

on account
of how he was dressed.

Grown ups are like that.

Fortunately, for the reputation
of Asteroid B-612,

a Turkish dictator
ordered his people,

under threat of death,

to wear European clothes.

The astronomer
repeated his demonstration

in 1920

wearing a very elegant suit.

And this time
everyone believed him.

[Guillaume Cote speaks English]
Some person shows up
dressed in a certain way

and nobody takes him seriously,

but then, as soon as
they conform
and they dress accordingly,

and sound the right way,
then suddenly people actually
take them seriously.

Western clothes
in Saint-Exupery's

experience and in his
imagination stand for the
leveling, the homogenization

of mankind by one standard,
one model.

He's very much a man
of the French empire,

at the same time,
he is a critic,
he is a satirist

of the leveling out
that imperialism imposes.

There were some terrible seeds

on The Little Prince's planet.

Baobab seeds.

The planet's soil
was infested by them.

"Now, if you tend
to a baobab too late,

you can never
get rid of it again.

It overgrows the whole planet.

Its roots pierce right through.

And if the planet is too small,

and if there are
too many baobabs,

they make it burst
into pieces."

It's smooth.

Touch it.

"This little boy already had
huge responsibilities

by which the very survival
of this planet

depended on him."

We tolerate
all kinds of acts of

say racist or prejudice
or misogyny day after day.

If you don't get to
those seeds right away,

those insidious seeds,

they will start to grow
and they will

overtake your planet.

And there is no going back.

This drawing is heart-breaking.

It shows The Little Prince
seated alone on his planet,

on his little chair
watching the sunsets.

And we know that
he loved to watch them.

Does he live here?

For now he's there.

When we get to
the end of the day,

and the sun goes down,
what would you feel?

Uh, happy.

Come let us go look
at a sunset now.

The Little Prince
in describing his planet,

there was a way for him
to watch a sunset

44 times in one day,

but just slightly
moving his chair.

When I was trying to
adapt this as a ballet,

I thought that was
such a beautiful image.

We came up with this idea
that we would reflect it
by having this chair rotate

on one leg.

And then we would
have the lighting
simulate a sunset

each time that it did
a quarter turn.

So, throughout the piece,
there are 44 changes of lights.

Time stops, then we all
watch the sun set.

And we're reminded of
how little we are, because

the day is finished,
and you know, no matter what,
the sun will always set.

We are inconsequential
to that process.

It's just
the end, isn't it?

Of everything.

Excepting if you have hope
of course, there is
a sunrise to follow.

When you contemplate a sunset,

then you are free.

You are free.

Here is the very heart
of the problem of flight.

What do you mean?

Look at this screw.

When I pull this string,
the screw will fly upwards.

All we have to do is to
find a power that
will drive it forward.

There was a huge romance
of aviation in France

between 1900 and 1940,

much more than
in the United States.

Aviation isn't simply a triumph
of material engineering,

but it's a triumph
of the romantic imagination.

That's very much part of
the background
ofThe Little Prince.

The aviation fever

particularly infects
Saint-Exupery,

there's no question he falls
out of the spell, if this
is what he wants to do.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery
was "baptized" in the air

when he was just a young child.

He wasn't even 10 years old.

There was
a small air field nearby.

He asked a pilot to take him up

and the pilot agreed.

I imagine that first flight
was magical for him.

And there was always
something very magical

about those years which are
marked by tragedy twice,

not only because
of the loss of his father,

but because the brother
dies young as well.

There's a very tender
relationship between
the two boys.

And simply
to whom he's closest.

The death of his brother,
Francois,

he had a hard time
accepting it.

He was 17 years old.

His brother was 15 years old.

For him it was an injustice.

His brother giving him
his favorite toys

in some kind of transmission.

They still live in your mind,

through these objects,

through our memories,
our strong bond.

The Little Prince is also about

how he can manage

the deaths of
the people we love.

He was
clearly a little bit lost,

searching for
the right thing to do
and for the right passion.

He sits for his naval exams
with no particular enthusiasm,

and he fails them.

He ends up in
Beaux-Arts school for
architecture,

and that doesn't last
terribly long.

So the question
in his early twenties
becomes, "What do you do?"

There is a petulance
in The Little Prince,

which is probably
a direct carry
over from its author.

And he is relentless in his
pursuit of a pilot's license,

and he unleashes that
on anyone
who stands in his way

in terms of keeping him
out of the air.

He is absolutely untiring

in terms of knocking on doors
and asking people,

you know, "May I go up
in your plane?
May I put in some hours."

He would fly with an
ex-German pilot who is
not even authorized to take up

a civilian
at a military air field.

He ends up breaking every rule
in order to get what he wants.

L'Atecoere in Toulouse

invited him
to participate in this

grand adventure
called l'Aeropostale.

Flying the mail
in hand-written letter,

from Paris to Dakar

over a series of stops

over the completely unpopulated
parts of the Western Sahara.

And the romance of that,

that sense of it,
it enveloped,
requiring that much effort

to be able to
connect two people.

I mean, that sense
of connection was
really vital to what he did.

Aeropostale is a way to

rejoin and relink to humanity

which he feels is detached

like him.

When he joins the mail service,

he immediately falls into
a cocoon of male solidarity.

They rely on each other,
they're up
against terrific odds.

The planes that fly
during these years are

really basic contraptions.

They go 80 miles an hour.

They are practically elastic,
so when they crash,
its not really a problem,

because so much just bounces
and they can be repaired

with a block of wood
and glue and a hammer.

They're crashing left and right
and saving each other's lives.

Every time they go off,
there is a chance
they are not going to return.

Piloting plane
at this time was a war.

These guys were so strong,
my God.

Escaping death.

We cannot understand

the quality of these people.

They're, they're,
they're amazing guys.

Something very...
He was a pilot of instinct.

He was a great pilot.

What is a great pilot?

A great pilot is a pilot alive.

A sheep,
if he eats these little bushes,

does he eat flowers, too?

A sheep eats anything
it finds in his reach.

Even flowers that have thorns?

The flower that you love
is not in danger.

I will draw you a muzzle
for your sheep.

I will draw you a railing
to put around your flower.

It is such a secret place,
the land of tears.

The Little Prince is wondering,

if the sheep comes along
and takes his rose,

and I can't protect her,
what's gonna become of me?

The rose
represents a very
complicated relationship,

and it was actually probably
the most challenging
aspect of the book.

The idea that relationships
take work and commitment.

I'm scarcely awake.

I beg that you will excuse me.

My petals are
still all disarranged.

Oh, how beautiful you are!

Am I not?

And The Little Prince,
completely abashed,

went to look for
a sprinkling can
of fresh water.

So, he tended the flower.

"At night, I want you to
put me under a glass globe.

It's very cold where you live."

She had come
in the form of a seed.

She couldn't have
known anything
of the other world.

Embarrassed over
having let herself

be caught on the verge
of such a naive untruth,

she coughed two or three times
in order to disguise this fact.

So The Little Prince,
in spite of all the good-will

that was inseparable
from his love,

had soon come to doubt her."

There's a really
interesting precursor
to The Little Prince.

Saint-Exupery visits
one of these forts

at which there is a
French colonial administrator,

and he's living there
with his wife

in the absolute
middle of nowhere.

The wife basically nurtures
a single solitary plant.

And you can see the beginnings
of The Little Prince's rose.

Saint-Exupery was posted to
the Western Sahara, Cape Juby.

It's only there so that
the planes can stop
and refuel on their way

along the coast of Africa
to Dakar.

Tarfaya, Cape Juby,
was the place where

they would exchange planes.

The mail that comes
from the north

and the mail that comes
from the south

they meet here in Tarfaya

then each plane returns
where they came from.

There's something
about the open sky,

the open view, the open sand

that utterly seduces
Saint-Exupery.

It's the first place
he feels at home.

As an ambassador
of the colonial power,

he actually, kind of takes it
upon himself to look like
and to speak with

the people of
what is today Morocco.

He didn't just stay in
the fort with the Spaniards.

He went out
to visit the locals.

Saint-Exupery had a gift,

a sort of key that could open

people's hearts.

Tarfaya is the only city that
still beats the same rhythm

of the Aeropostale
and Saint-Exupery, because
nothing has changed.

This is the airstrip
of Tarfaya.

The little wall there actually
is the house of Saint-Exupery

where he lived for 18 months.

And the hangars
are still there.

The mail service.

It's like a military squadron
in many ways.

And among that group of people,

two of the other great
pioneering French aviators,

Jean Mermoz
and Henri Guillaumet

become very close friends
of Saint-Exupery.

Several times they will
rescue and relay each other.

But Guillaumet in particular
will crash in the Andes.

The moment when Guillaumet
disappears from radar

and we assume that he's gone

is a moment
that will play a huge part

in Antoine's life.

It's a huge friendship.
Even love.

And so he goes out to find him.

Even taking personal risks
to find him.

In this vast unreadable void,

he knows
it is almost impossible.

But... he goes away.

For days and days on end

Guillaumet tromps through
the snow Andes.

And says things like,
"It's just the next step that
matters."

He's finally saved by
a woman who lives in the
foothills of the Andes.

An extraordinary survival tale

that Saint-Exupery
will make famous
because he will write about it

in the Wind, Sand and Stars.

When he's posted
to South America
to fly the mail routes,

he meets a very fetching,

very charismatic
28-year-old widow, Consuelo.

Whom he marries very quickly,
takes back to France,
introduces to his family.

And Consuelo was
the perfect match for him
in the sense that she too lives

a couple of feet above reality.

She's a tremendous
spinner of tales.

She's a highly
imaginative creature.

But on the other hand,

they have a very fraught
relationship.

Living together, living apart.

Each of them has
other romantic attachments
and that gets messy at times.

Friends are called in
to help the two of them
communicate better.

And yet they can't
live without each other.

First time I met her

was when Saint-Exupery
brought her here.

I was six years old
with my sisters.

Consuelo spoke kindly
to each of us,

as one does
with young children.

She was a dreamer.

Part of the background
of the book famously is about

saving Exupery's own very
tormented and complicated
marriage.

And which is represented

in effect in the allegory of
The Prince and the Rose.

When Saint-Exupery
was lost in the desert,

Consuelo took up a table
at the Brasserie Elite in Paris

and, sort of,
dramatized her grief
in a very Rose-like way.

And that urge toward
self-dramatization

was inseparable from
whatever grief she was feeling.

What character trait would you
use to describe the flower?

She was trying so hard
to, like, impress people.

And she wasn't really
telling the truth,

and you could always catch her
when she was telling a lie

because she would cough.

How does The Little Price
feel about the flower?

-He loves her.
-He loves her?

Why?

Because she's different,
and she's not like rest of,
all the other flowers.

I have
a very complicated
relationship with the Rose.

She's vain, all she wants to do
is talk about herself.

I wouldn't want to spend time
with somebody like that.

She seems to be

the only female character
throughout the entire book,

and she's given these qualities
that I think

women these days
were working to fight.

I don't think
it's a generalized way

of seeing women
for Saint-Exupery.

It was much more
one specific woman in his life.

"I believe that for his escape,

he took advantage
of a migration
of a flock of wild birds.

On the morning
of his departure, he put
his planet in perfect order.

He possessed
two active volcanoes.

And they were very
convenient for heating
his breakfast in the morning.

He also had one volcano that
was extinct.

But as he said,
'One never knows.'

So, he cleaned out
the extinct volcano, too.

The Little Prince
also pulled up,

with a certain sense
of dejection, the last
little shoots of the baobabs.

He believed that he would
never want to return.

But on this last morning,

all these familiar tasks
seemed very precious to him.

And when he watered the flower
for the last time,

he prepared to place her
under the shelter
of her glass globe,

he realized that he was
very close to tears.

'Goodbye,'

he said to the flower."

I was
a little bit annoyed
at the Prince.

Nobody is perfect

and when we choose to love
we can't expect them to be

exactly how we want them to be
when we want them to be.

If you love something,
let it go, and if it
comes back, then you'll know.

I want to be there with you
fully and be present.

But,

can I do that
and then will you embrace me,

or are you going to just,
sort of, run away
like The Prince runs away?

When The Little Prince
takes off on his

intergalactic journey,

he makes six stops
before arriving on Earth.

Every solitary human
on each one of these planets

has a characteristic that is

preventing him from
forming meaningful bonds
with other people.

They're comic villains,
they're not really evil.

They're just deluded,
they're fools of a kind.

But those are the people
who we are meant to laugh at.

And to mistrust.

And what it exposes,
when you think about it,

are all the human vanities
to which

everyone one of us
on the planet,
no matter where we live,

what color our skin,
what language we speak,

what our religion,
all of the vanities
to which we are prone.

The Little Prince found
himself in the neighborhood

of the Asteroids 325, 326, 327,

328, 329, and 330.

He began therefore by
visiting them in order
to add to his knowledge.

Saint-Exupery spends
his time denouncing the jobs

that have devoured individuals.

The king acting like a king,

the vain man being vain.

People believe
they are consistent,

but in fact
they are inconsistent.

Because they have
forgotten their humanity.

[in English] Your Majesty,
it's such a small planet.
Why do you need borders?

Well...

♪ Why do borderlines exist? ♪

♪ Well, first and foremost
on the list ♪

♪ If all the borders
were destroyed ♪

♪ Tomorrow I'd be unemployed ♪

♪ And what would
statesman do for fun ♪

♪ If all at once the world
was one ♪

There's no meaning for a king

or a president
or a prime minister

to sit on a big chair,

decorated by gold

if you're not loved
by your people.

The way Saint-Exupery
draws these planets,

really emphasizes the solitude.

You know, he makes a pretty
small orb for the planet,

and then, the human on top
is enormous.

The Little Prince never once

holds anything against anyone.

He is just there to observe.

Do you really admire me
so very much?

What does that mean, "admire'?

To admire means
that you regard me

as the handsomest,
the best dressed, the richest

and the most intelligent man
on this planet.

But you are the only man
on your planet.

Do me this kindness,

admire me just the same.

What makes the grown-ups
he encounters along the way

foolish is
they're monomaniacal.

They only can see the world
through one prism,
through one obsession.

The drunkard is the one
who sort of comes closest

to actually having
some insight into the world.

Although he just gets drunk
over and over again.

"'Why are you drinking?'
demanded The Little Prince?

'So that I many forget,'
replied The Tippler.

'Forget what?'

'Forget that I'm ashamed,'
The Tippler confessed.

'Ashamed of what?'
insisted The Little Prince."

I think
the drinker's tragedy is not
the drinking, but the shame.

If you're constantly ashamed of

your own illness,

that's gonna get in the way of
allowing yourself to be
vulnerable enough

to reach out to another person.

You own the stars?

Yes.

And what good does it do you
to own the stars?

It does me the good
of making me rich.

And what good does it do you
to be rich?

Because...

I don't now.

How is it possible
for one to own the stars?

If you get an idea
before anyone else, it's yours.

So...

I got the idea
of owning the stars.

You're with The Businessman
and his is personal choice

to be so obsessed with numbers.

1% is richer than 99%.

It has to be shared.

We live in a universe today
where that lesson
is not heard by

very many of these
multi-billionaires that are
governing the planet.

It's only once we multiply
all these

ridiculous behaviors

that we them ask ourselves

"What world do we live in?"

"'It's a terrible job I have.

It used to be
reasonable enough.

I put the lamp out mornings
and lit it after dark.

I had the rest of the day
to rest.

And the night to sleep.

Now that the planet

revolves once per minute,

I don't have an instant's rest.

I light and extinguish once
per minute.'

'That's funny! Your days here
are one minute long.'

"It's not funny at all,"
The Lamplighter said.

'You and I have
already been talking

for a month.'"

I think, most people
can relate to The Lamplighter.

We live in this very
capitalistic society.

That's what The Lamplighter
represented for me.

Somebody who really has no idea
why they're on this routine,

why they're following
these instructions,

not challenging the system.

The reason why
The Little Prince can relate

to what The Lamplighter's
doing is that for the
first time he meets somebody

who's actually
serving a purpose
beyond himself.

He is dedicated to something
that is larger than him.

The theme of impermanence
in the universe,

contrary to The Geographer,

who speaks of things as eternal

but eternity doesn't exist.

Everything changes,
evolves, moves.

The sixth planet was ten times
larger than the last one.

It was inhabited by an old
gentleman who wrote for
luminous books.

[The Geographer]
I am a Geographer.

What is a Geographer?

A Geographer is a scholar,

who knows the location of
all the seas, rivers, towns,
mountains, and deserts.

The Geographer puts purpose
on certain things
but not on other things.

If it's a river,
and then I can write it down.

If its a rose, it'll die.

The flower is the most
beautiful thing on my planet.

We do not recall them
because they are

ephemeral.

What does that mean,
"ephemeral"?

It means, which is in danger
of speedy disappearance.

That's part of
the human nature.

To try to posses things
and especially to keep it for

as long as we can.

But there are things
you know that
we will lose them.

One learns about
the lack of permanence.

We have to learn. It helps us.

If we learn when
we are very young,
that nothing is lasting,

and sadly, not even love.

"The seventh planet was Earth.

The Earth is not
just an ordinary planet.

One can count 111 kings,

not forgetting to be sure,
the negro kings among them.

Seven thousand geographers,

nine hundred thousand
businessmen,

seven million, five hundred
thousand tipplers,

three hundred
and eleven million
conceited men,

that is to say about
two billion grown-ups."

What is our quest?

What are we searching for?

Freedom?

Spirituality?

We need to search.

The most important
is not having an answer.

The most important
is to search.

In a spirit of searching,
you're open.

When The Little Prince
arrived on the Earth,

he was very much surprised
not to see any people.

He was beginning to be afraid
he had come
to the wrong planet.

It's not by chance that
the first animal

met by The Little Prince
on Earth is a snake.

The Snake, when you see it,
you think

it's really peaceful.
You think it won't hurt you.

The Snake represents
the double face that
we can see from some people.

The first meeting
with The Snake

is much more mysterious
and the danger.

There's a little bit of idea
that The Prince doesn't
want to be there.

The coil of gold,
the color of moonlight

flashed across the sand.

Good evening, Mr. Snake.

Good evening.

What planet is this
on which I have come down?

This is the Earth.

This is Africa.

It is a little lonely
in the desert.

It is also lonely among men.

You are a funny animal.

You are no thicker
than a finger.

But I am more powerful than
the finger of a king.

I can help you someday,

if you grow too home-sick
for your own planet.

The Little Prince
senses some evil.

Whether it's
a physical characteristic,

or something that
he intuitively feels.

There is certainly some fear
when they first meet.

And yet, a fascination.

The Snake
and The Little Prince.

He appears as
an instrument of death.

You have to have some figure
representing the darker side
of human experience.

Saint-Exupery presents
a world that is inconceivable.

We'll call it magic realism.

In French literature,

magical realism
was not popular.

The real avant-garde
was situated in

the interest
for material things.

Imagine that nobody
could grasp the idea that

this childish representation
of the world,

was capable of eliciting
deep thought and reflection.

We only see The Little Prince

from the back
three times in the book.

And each time,
it's in a moment of

profound loneliness.

And this is one of them.

The Little Prince is
at the end of a long journey

and he still hasn't found
what he is looking for.

He's on the edge
of a jagged cliff,

perched on the top of
the highest mountain that
he can find on Earth

looking for human contact.

Good morning.

Good morning...

Who are you?

Who are you?

Be my friends.

I'm all alone.

I'm all alone. All alone.

All alone.

On my planet, I have a flower.

She always was
the first to speak.

That echo, is just...

A sound of the deepest pain...

that one can feel.

The pain of complete isolation.

"It was a blossoming
rose garden.

'Good morning,' said the roses.

The Little Prince
gazed at them.

All of them
looked like his flower.

'Who are you?'
he asked astounded.

'We're roses,' the roses said.

His flower had told him
she was the only one
of her kind

in the universe.

I thought I was rich
because my flower was unique,

and all I own
is an ordinary rose.

And he lay down
in the grass and cried."

The Little Prince
sees a garden of roses.

They are all beautiful.

And all the same.

And he realizes that his rose,

that he found so unique,

was not unique.

[Kaur in English]
He had already picked his rose.

He's caring for the rose,
he's in love with the rose.

Then you just don't
want to leave the rose
even though he does.

But then he arrives
at this place

and he sees all these
other beautiful options
out there.

Have I made the right decision?

Is this really the one?

I find it immensely charming
that this pioneer of aviation,

the author of the great
classics of flight was actually
a very distracted flyer

There are numerous stories
from various mechanics
with whom he flew

that they would always find
balled up pieces of paper
in the cockpit.

There is one famous story
where he refused to land,

'cause he had to finish
the novel he was reading.

Distraction in the cockpit
is a rather
dangerous combination.

He will attempt to fly
essentially from North to South
America in a straight line.

From New York City
to Patagonia,
but he'll crash in Guatemala.

And that crash was
purely pilot error in that

there was a little
mathematical mistake

made between translating
imperial and American gallons.

And that's a crash which
takes a terrific toll on him
physically.

The accident was due to
several converging causes.

On that day,
the wind was forcing us to

take off
in an uphill direction.

Unfortunately,
the landing strip in Guatemala

is situated at an altitude
of 1500 meters,

which significantly
reduces a plane's importance.

At the end of my run,

I was going
about 140 km per hour,

and I hadn't yet
left the ground.

With no other choice,

I lifted the plane,

to get over the obstacles
in our way.

I managed to get it off
the ground,

but no longer than a second.

I crashed on the other side
of the landing strip.

From that moment on,
I don't know what happened.

My next memories start
about a week after that.

In 1939, I was 14 years old
when war was declared.

I remember that day.

England and France
declared war on Germany

at 5:00.

[Adam Gopnik in English]
At the time of the most brutal,
the most murderous,

the most unimaginably
cruel conflict

ever to have was swept across
this sad planet.

When I learned a little bit

about Saint-Exupery's
own experience in the war,

I started to feel the pain
in the book.

And I was struck with

how extraordinary it was that
Saint-Exupery was able to

convey a sense of

pain and hope

in one work of art.

When the Germans
invaded France in 1940,

Saint-Exupery's flying
nearly suicidal
reconnaissance missions.

France falls,

the reconnaissance unit
is disbanded.

Everyone in France thought that
they had figured out

a material response to
the Germans, the Maginot Line,
the French Army,

and that material response
had failed.

Saint-Exupery decided
that the failure, the tragedy,

had been spiritual.

[Schiff] His attempts
to say, "This is
a universal problem for us,

we're all in this together,"
he writes an
incredibly eloquent plea

called an "Open Letter
To Frenchmen Everywhere"

fall on deaf ears.

Because the need at this point
for accusation
and counter accusation,

is so great, there's a lot of
finger pointing.

And he's basically
persona non grata among
a lot of the French community

for this reluctance to take
any kind of political stand.

There is that cry
from The Little Prince,

"It's also lonely among men."

When Antoine de Saint-Exupery
heard

about his best friend
Henri Guillaumet was shot
down during the war,

it affected him a lot.

All his friend from
the time of Aeropostale
passed away.

He felt alone, like he had
no more friends on Earth.

Maybe Henri Guillaumet
could be related
to the story of The Fox

because that strong
connection together like the
story of The Little Prince.

"It was then that The Fox
appeared, 'Good morning,'
said The Fox.

'Good morning,'
The Little Prince
responded politely.

'Come and play with me,'
proposed The Little Prince.

'I am so unhappy.'

'I cannot play with you,'
The Fox said.

'I'm not tamed.'

What does that mean, 'tamed'?"

"If you tame me,

we shall need one another.

To me, you will be unique.

And I will be unique to you."

When Saint-Exupery was
in Tarfaya, Cape Juby,

he tamed a fennec,
a fox of the desert.

So we think that the fox is
coming from the experience
in Tarfaya in 1927.

"What must I do to tame you?"
asked The Little Prince.

'You must be very patient,'
replied The Fox.

'First, you will sit
at a little distance from me,

I shall look at you
out of the corner of my eye,

and you'll say nothing.

Words are the source
of misunderstandings.'"

I always
had a little bit of trouble

with that concept
of taming because

we don't really wanna
tame the people that we love,
do we?

We wanna have an equal
relationship with them.

Part of the problem there is
with the translation of
the French word.

What The Fox is
asking of The Little Prince,

"Please trust me
and teach me to trust you."

I think he wants us
intuitively to make

a distinction between
taming and dominating.

That we can have decent
relations with creatures
outside our experience.

Creatures that are
wild and feral.

That do not depend on our

being able to own, rule,
and dominate them,

but depend on our
being able to be in a kind of

concert with them.

Friendship depends
for its duration,

for its depth.

You have to share something
which will endure.

It does give meaning to the
whole of life when you
have someone to share it with.

"'Goodbye,' he said.

'Goodbye,' said The Fox.

'Here's my secret.

A very simple secret.

It's only with the heart,
that one can see rightly.

What is essential
is invisible to the eye.'

'What is essential

is invisible to the eye,'
The Little Prince repeated,

so he would be
sure to remember."

That was the quote that just

really stayed with me and
meant a lot.

I think, no matter what your
interpretation of the book is,

or wherever you're coming
from or however you're
looking at the book,

and whatever age you are, that
resonates.

He's got a big weight inside,
so he can sit.

The Fox doesn't say,
"I've got a message for you.

I've got a lesson for you."

The Fox says, "I've got a
secret."

A secret isn't something
that comes down from on high.

A secret is something
that is shared between friends.

Maybe it's even whispered
between friends.

We sort of conspire
with everyone in the book

to realize that we have
a shared secret.

Love is not a transaction.

It's a form of self-sacrifice.

It's a form of surrender.

And we have to risk everything
in our pursuit,

if we are to deserve it.

"He was a merchant
selling sophisticated pills,

and tended to quench one's
thirst.

If a single pill was swallowed
once a week,

the need to drink disappeared.

'Why are you selling those?'
asked The Little Prince.

'Because it saves a lot of
time,' said The Merchant.

'Experts have
worked it all out.

You save 53 minutes a week.'

'And what does one do
with those 53 minutes?'

'Whatever one wishes.'

'If I had 53 minutes to spend,'
said The Little Prince,

'I would walk very slowly
towards the spring
of fresh water.'"

The Little Prince meets
a merchant selling pills

that will stop you from
ever being thirsty again.

The Little Prince says,

"I would walk
towards a fountain,"

It's the time that we activate.

The power to live,
the power to do,
the power to advance.

Saint-Exupery puts an end
to the fatality of passive time

and instead creates a time
that belongs to the soul.

As a man of science,
as an aviator,

Saint-Exupery was always
entirely enchanted
by technology.

On the other hand,
he would rail
against the technology.

And that sense of our being
isolated by these advances

is something
he really anticipates.

It won't hurt you.

-Okay.

-Do you want Mama in with you?

Hmm?
Okay, let me call her, okay?

It's okay.

It's okay.

I don't like lights.

You like light.
I know you like
flashlights, right?

No. But I don't like lights.

You like lights.

I have a secret, okay?

We're gonna play pretend.

Okay?

Not seeing light

is what defines blindness.

Oh.

Can you open big, big, big--

Last time I did that,
it hurt my eye.

No, I don't believe you.

You're trying to get my focus.

Okay, try not to move too much,
okay?

-Okay.
-You're doing really well.

Okay, good job.

As your vision decreases,

the space occupied
from your visual cortex,

decreases.

And other senses increase.

That's really good.

You're doing good.

It's when it happens without
them realizing it,
they've adapted.

And the reverence
that we have for technology,

one would not do without
them and we're very
grateful for them.

But these are all
just instruments.

It's a great thing
because of the purpose
it serves.

And that always depends
on the human decisions.

When France falls in 1940

the decision becomes,
as it was for many Frenchmen,

"What to do?"

Are you willing to live
in Occupied France?

Or are you gonna go elsewhere?

If you'd ask 1,000 Frenchmen,

where they would like to go,
999 would've said America,

and the 1,000th
would've said New York.

Partly because America
was France's great hope
at that moment.

And if America would
only enter the war,

perhaps the Germans
could be beaten.

Saint-Exupery obviously
needs to leave Europe
as quickly as possible,

and will sail for New York.

He arrives at the end of 1940.

It's at a moment of
intense loneliness
and intense frustration

that no one has come to
France's rescue,

that America has not yet
entered the war.

This country is occupied
by this alien force,

everyone he knows is in danger.

The letter we have
indicates his level of despair.

And even the total loss
of creativity.

He was feeling hopeless
and depressed

in the streets of New York.

We're not clear

why Consuelo finally will
sail to America in 1942.

Whether he sends for her,

or whether she says later,
she shamed him into
sending for her.

But the circle is squared
by bringing her to America,

but finding for her
an apartment separate from his
on Central Park South.

So they're living in apartments
a floor away from each other.

He essentially says to her at
one point,

"If you're here, I can't
think. And if you're not
here, I can't write."

It was then that his wife,
Consuelo,

suggested that they head
to Long Island.

To rest and get some sea air.

So they went to Long Island,

and someone offered him
this huge home,

Bevin House.

The house was completed
during the Civil War, 1862.

The Bevin House, an
Asharoken is kind of the
jewel in North Port.

Not only because
of the structure

but because of the energy
and just the environment here.

His American editors

seeing that he wasn't writing
a new book,

and Pilote de Guerre

was a best-seller,

they suggested to Antoine

that he write
a children's story.

Pamela Travers is here

in New York City writing
the Mary Poppins stories.

J.R.R. Tolkien is in Oxford
writing The Hobbit

and The Lord of the Rings.

Just as Saint-Exupery
is also writing
Le Petit Prince.

What do all those books
have in common?

Well, they're all fables about
the extreme edge of experience.

The book was rendered here,
in the study.

In this serenity and quiet.

This little fellow here,

is a fellow that Saint-Exupery
drew in various forms.

There are many of them

that we can find
throughout the years.

The little fellow
is the foreshadowing

of The Little Prince.

He drew with a Stylograph.

The tip upside down.

I can still see him doing it.

He'd been drawing little,

mad little figures,
little bonhommes,

since his 20s.

All over papers, table cloths,

dry cleaner receipts,
this little image reoccurs.

Sometimes they had wings,

sometimes they had eyebrows,
sometimes they didn't
have eyebrows.

The Little Prince is
standing on very craggy hills.

People will ask him
where this little man
came from.

And his answer to that was
always,

"I looked down at
a blank sheet of paper one day,

and this little figure looked
up at me and said, 'I am
The Little Prince.'"

We all think of it as a
French story,

or a global story.

But it was a story
that was born here in New York.

You can hold it up to the light
and even see the watermark.

It says, "FIDELITY onion skin.

Made in USA."

This is the earliest surviving
version that we have
of the story

written in Saint-Exupery's
own hand.

This evokes Saint-Exupery
at his desk
with his pen and paper.

Coffee stains
on some of the pages.

Creating a story that feels now
like it belongs to all of us.

When I saw his original
manuscript pages,

they were so fragile

and wrinkled and scribbly.

And they just looked like

they could've
blown out the window,
they could've caught on fire.

One drawing that he had done
that he didn't like,

was crumpled up
and had been
saved out of the garbage.

The fragility,
the ephemeral quality
of the poetry and the pages...

What if it didn't exist?

This is the work
of one creator.

Saint-Exupery wrote
and illustrated the book.

And he goes a step further

by claiming that
the illustrator of the book
is in fact his narrator.

And his narrator
isn't such a good artist.

Because he never had
a chance to
develop that skill as a child.

Because, of course,
we grown-ups discouraged him.

With so much more
powerful a book,

never really
seeing the aviator,

we only see his arm with a
hammer.

It makes him more universal
to have him off-stage visually.

There is a drawing
that Consuelo made in 1930.

So, 12 years
before The Little Prince.

It's a self-portrait.

She had the lioness haircut
of that era,

a bit like a little boy.

She had a large shawl

with stars all over it.

It looks
just like The Little Prince.

So, you can see that
the birth of The Little Prince

comes from many factors

accumulated over time.

My full family
was 11 children.

This was a house really full
of life all the time

and no class distinctions of
any sort.

I remember jumping through
the stairs almost
when I was a small boy.

Look at these details.

That's what
raises most memories.

Very good memories.

My father had invited
Saint-Exupery to give a
lecture to the Palais Montcalm.

They had met in Montreal.

And very much agreed
on the primacy
of the common good.

They really
fraternized over that,

and became friends.

He was invited to our home.

I think it was
the 4th May, in 1942.

I was eight years old.

My memory of him
is right here in the center
of the living room,

and the children,
we were around him.

He would show us how to make
these paper planes.

And he would show us drawings.

This is 1942,
the plane was something
quite recent.

He was the aviator, our hero.

People used to tell me,
"You talk too much, Thomas.

You talk too much. Shut up."

But I kept on talking anyway,
always asking questions.

He would listen,
he seemed interested.

For once, nobody told me
to shut up.

Saint-Exupery really liked
to play with him.

And many say that he has been
inspiring Saint-Exupery for
The Little Prince.

I always said

I married a man
from another planet.

I'm the only one who really
believed about that story.

When you marry a man
of another planet,
it's not so easy.

But when I heard that story,

it made me understood
Thomas much better,

because I was
seeing through him
Le Petit Prince

and I always loved that story.

So finally, I only saw his
qualities instead of seeing...

-The defects.
-The others...

I'm sure Thomas De Koninck

was one of the kids
who he was inspired by,

and I think that though
he certainly has some
of the freshness of spirit

and the fearlessness
that bright kids have,

I think we should be
cautious in describing

the character of
The Little Prince to anything

except Saint-Exupery's
own imagination.

"It was now the eight day
since my accident in Sahara.

But I have not yet succeeded
in repairing my plane

and I have nothing more
to drink.

I too would like to walk
to a spring of fresh water."

Let's look for a well.

And as I walked on,

I found the well at daybreak.

The Little Prince says

that it's not
the taste of the water,

but how hard we really
had to work to find it
and to experience it.

Water represents life.

The desert is not simply
a spiritual place.

It's a philosophical place.

To breathe in the desert
is to feel the fragility
of your breath.

You simplify yourself.

In order to survive.

The well that
we had come to was not like
the wells of the Sahara.

And I thought
I must be dreaming.

You must keep your promise.

What promise?

You know,
a muzzle for my sheep.

I'm responsible
for this flower.

So then, I made
a pencil sketch of a muzzle.

I found myself doing
something I had not done
with any other of the books

that I had read to my children,

and that was too actually pause
before the ending.

And say, "I think we've read
enough for tonight.

We'll have to
continue tomorrow."

Why was he compelled to return

to continue his conversation
with that rather satanic snake?

"'You have good poison?

You're sure that it will
not make me suffer too long?

Now go away,'
said The Little Prince,

'I wanna get down
from the wall.'

I dropped my eyes
then to the foot of the wall

and I leaped into the air.

There before me facing The
Little Prince was one of
those yellow snakes

that take just 30 seconds
to bring your life to an end.

At the noise I made,
The Snake let himself flow
easily across the sand.

'What does this mean?'
I demanded.

'Why are you
talking with snakes?'

'I'm glad that you've found
what was the matter with
your engine,' he said.

'Now you can go back home.
I, too, am going
back home today.'

'Little man,' I said, 'tell me
that it is only a bad dream,

this affair of the snake."

But he did not answer my plea.

He said to me instead,

'The thing that is important
is the thing
that is not seen.'"

The struggle inside The Pilot

is between the desire to
help The Little Prince,
to protect him,

and also the necessity
for The Little Prince to
go back to his rose.

That night I did not see him
set out on his way.

When I succeeded
in catching up with him,

he was walking along
with a quick
and resolute stagger.

There was a flash of yellow
close to his ankle.

He remained motionless
for an instant.

He did not cry out.

He fell as gently
as a tree falls.

There was not even any sound.

What looks
like a cosmic suicide

is one of the greatest
mysteries of all.

Is he sacrificing his soul
to the universe for love?

The act has all the signs
of a suicide.

The ultimate choice.

At the end of alienation.
At the end of infantile work.

"At the end of
man's exploitation of man."

There lies
the ultimate choice, suicide.

[Kaur in English]
The snake is gonna
send you home,

and isn't that universe home?

That seems like
a state of permanence to me
versus this world.

There is a beautiful
and poignant ambiguity

which I'm never sure how
we're intended to read it,

no matter how times
I've read the book.

One way to read it,
The Little Prince has simply
been killed by the snake bite,

and the looking up
and hearing the laughter
in the stars

is something that
The Aviator projects.

Saint-Exupery tell us

the true kingdom
is the consciousness,
the person.

And the ties you create
with another people.

The Little Prince learns to be
the master of his kingdom.

He'll return to his planet
to find his flower

because he finally realized
that was she
who was the most important.

Saint-Exupery manages
somehow to talk

his way back into the cockpit,

which is really the most
miraculous thing he ever does.

He's far too old,
he's far too large
to be flying a P-38.

He can't even
fold himself into it.

He doesn't know
how to speak English,

so he can't really communicate
with the control tower.

At one point he actually
crashes a P-38
off the end of the airfield

'cause he doesn't know how to
pump the hydraulic brakes.

So it's really irresponsible
for him even to be flying.

All his exiled writer friends
who joined him in New York

All his exiled writer friends
who joined him in New York

were sipping champagne
with Marlene Dietrich
and Greta Garbo,

living a worldly life.

He said, "I feel like
I'm watching the war
from a theater seat."

[Nelson in English]
This is a person

who had flown missions during
the Second World War.

This is a person who had
a dear Jewish friend,
Leon Werth,

who was back in France,
to whom he dedicated
The Little Prince.

Saint-Exupery knew what it was
to see his beloved world

at risk of annihilation.

On July 31st, he leaves for his
10th reconnaissance mission

over Grenoble,
Lyon, and Belieu.

The last flight still remains
a mystery because

he was supposed to
return to base after taking
picture of Occupied France.

At first, I was told
he was still alive...

Missing did not
necessarily mean dead.

He had survived
so many accidents
and catastrophes.

We'll never know what happened
on that last flight.

It's clear the plane
crashed directly into
the water at high speed.

We finally identify
the wreckage of the plane

in the Mediterranean Sea,
not far from Marseille.

A fisherman found in his nets
a bracelet...

He cleans the bracelet
and he can read...

uh, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
and the address of
the publisher in New York.

It's a miracle,
you've found the bracelet
of Saint-Exupery,

now we know the plane is there.

And they were able to
identify that, yes, that
was the plane piloted

by Saint-Exupery
on the 31st July, 1944.

When he had the accident
in Guatemala

he promised me
he would never fly again.

But, once he recovered
he went back to flying.

The Little Prince left also
with his flock of wild birds.

He continued flying.

The Little Prince
is his spirit,

asking him, "Why would you
abandon your rose?"

That death was
a very harsh shock for her.

But, at the same time,

She didn't completely collapse.

She continued to live.

But, it was clear

that Antoine
was the love of her life.

After that,
she lived in her memories.

That was Aunt Consuelo.

[Nelson in English]
We're used to having stories
that tie up nicely.

Fairy tales with happy endings.

Saint-Exupery doesn't give us
that.

When finally published
in France, it's published
after the war,

and he's no longer alive.

And obviously,
the disappearance of
The Little Prince at the end

reads differently
in light of the author's death.

Saint-Exupery's disappearance

is part of the mystique
of The Little Prince.

'Cause it seems to be
so much the kind of thing
that would happen

within the world
of The Little Prince.

That The Aviator would fly off
at the end into the unknown.

And now six years have
already gone by.

I have never yet
told this story.

But there is one
extraordinary thing,

when I drew the muzzle
for The Little Prince,

I forgot to add
the leather strap to it.

He will never have been
able to fasten it on his sheep.

So now I keep on wondering...

What happened there
on his planet?

Look up at the sky.

Ask yourself,

"Has the sheep
eaten the flower or not?"

And you'll see
how everything changes.

This day has been magic.

-This is a magical day?
-Yeah.

"No one flower is unique
in the world."

Saint-Exupery wanted everyone
to have a similar language.

To unite everyone

in one common context

without having to go to war.

The Little Prince
is a universal message
of peace.

As he will say of those
early years in North Africa,

what matters is what
you carry around inside you.

You're a treasure chest
of memories.

And that that doesn't
necessarily involve
either language or words.

The heart is the finest
register that we have of all.

Hi!

The importance of the heart
with respect to love,

that's very important
in The Little Prince.

An invisible essence.