A Dystopian Little Prince

Over a year ago, the first trailers for an animated adaptation of Antoine du St. Exupery's The Little Prince first appeared and promised an enchanting film that I had told myself would, along with Inside Out be a pair of movies that my son could turn to for wisdom for years and years.  Throughout the months that followed the promise of a blockbuster bringing the hordes to the theatres fizzled and left me puzzled. There were delays and delays for the English language version to be released.  In March 2016 it made a brief appearance in Canada while news came out that the film would go direct to Netflix. Odd harbingers all.

Still, I was eager to take my son to the movie whenever it would be released.  I tried reading my son a chapter a night for a few nights and then when the movie tie-in book came out I resorted to that for the sake of having a one night read. When the time came to see it in March, I headed out to see it on my own.  He was tired that particular day and the showings were scheduled so sporadically that it suggested that it would be better to see it alone if I were to see it while it was still in the theatres.

I had only come upon The Little Prince when I was in my late 20's. It immediately had an impact on me and since reading it I have probably purchased at least a dozen copies whether as gifts or replacements for leant copies that remained wayward. I currently have three copies, including a French-language version and the film tie-in I mentioned. I was going in informed and with a vested interest in how it turned out.

It was evident in the trailer that the movie was going to lean toward a telling of the story hat would indicate it's telling and themes rather than directly tell the story in the manner that St. X wrote. There was a clever reference to a modern single mom's ambition to get her child into Werth Academy - named after dedicatee Leon Werth and I thought that was an interesting sign that every corner of the book was going to be mined for its potential. As the story moved back and forth between the pilot's interaction with the modern world and his recollection of the story in the desert as he first wrote or experienced it, the story was true to its source and as enchanting as hoped.

The distinctive animation of the desert scenes had a delicate element to it which reflected in a small way the illusion that St. Expuery's story was of those drawings that he shared and keeping alive a shallower roman a clef truth to what he concocted out of his experiences when his own plane crashed in the desert. The animation lends itself to the profound and ancient rather than mere whimsy and in these scenes of the movie, the novella's wisdom is respected and delivered effectively to the screen.

If only the whole movie were presented in that delicate manner. The alternating "modern" scenes about the now-ancient pilot's efforts to befriend and enlighten the high-achiever-to-be girl next door, are of a more contemporary CGI look and the efforts there eventually test the patience of those more familiar with the original story. The framing emphasizes the importance of the story and its messages in our modern world but the reality is that the source is an exceptionally deep 108 (illustrated) pages. 

This interpretation of the story for screen ultimately fails on the dark turn the story makes during the concluding act. The filmmakers discard the fragility of the desert scenes for a dystopian sequence that calls to mind George Orwell's 1984 or Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall." The sheer menace during these scenes would have prompted me to leave before the film ended if I had been watching it with my son. I finished the film on my own, but felt disappointed at the end result. Given the responsibility of adapting The Little Prince, the filmmakers blew it with their third act and that would provide some reason why the film had such an odd route to (home) screens in North America.

Parenting and Play

Last Friday afternoon, I was out with my camera and drifted into a rather quiet, verdant area that invited passers by to muse over what flowers were intoxicating with the particular scents of spring that were emanating.  I had popped my macro lense on for a few close ups to file away and to muse quietly in the state of mind that a well-crafted and maintained garden can inspire with and get into that zone with the camera.

I was not in complete isolation there. I was a few minutes walk from English Bay in Vancouver and there was the pop and twang of tennis nearby to draw my eye in that direction. Cars were circulating in range of the tennis court and, a little closer to me, a mother was with her friend and her child. From where I stood, I could tell from the toddling stride toward the road that the child was around 15 months old. From the bucket hat and overalls I assumed it was a boy. As he tested his stride and the limits of his independence, his mother got up from where she was and managed to get him to play peek-a-boo.  If I were in that situation, I would have bounded toward the boy in headlong pursuit, panic and over-protectiveness getting the best of me. Peek-a-boo would have been well done the list of interventions to keep the boy out of traffic, no matter how light it was.

I too was rapt in this moment of play and watched as mom escalated her hiding in the game and the boy, giggling, started coming back towards his mother. I am still blown away. From the moment I saw that, I tried to think of ways that I could use play instead of panic to get Gabriel to "get" what I'd prefer him to be doing.  The first thoughts are that it is too late for some of those things where he is too headstrong or rambunctious to settle down and get my point. My attempt at role-playing him through the situation where he bit a classmate at daycare was one possibility and while it was a calm and rational moment for me when trying to discipline or teach him, it is one of those things that I'll have to file away and try to use with him later.

I'm sure there is always a type of play that will help you make a point to your child when teaching certain things and the key is to keep calm and figure out what types of play work best when trying to teach your child the things that you want them to know. When it happens, though, it is magical.