We went to an actual movie theatre last night to see Inside Out, my first go-around at a 3-D movie and a bit of an adventure, given my rather sour attitude toward Disney, with or without Pixar. The film didn’t disappoint: it was full of emotional moments pulling all the familiar levers to generate empathy/sympathy and stunning animation to go with the sassy, cliché-laden language of contemporary pre-teen parlance. Still, I was there because my grand daughter, a somewhat atypical eleven-year-old, had told me that I should see this film, and she was present, along with Mummy, Daddy, Baby Brother, Friend, Nana, Grandpa and Grandma. I could see where she would like the film and where it might raise some interesting questions were they laid out in some sort of reflective way.
The feature was delayed because some folks had arrived too late to get through the gauntlet of ticket wicket and concession. I hate it when people aren’t punctual, and even more when others cater to the needs of the tardy. Hence, I was not in a particularly receptive frame of mind when I was shown a trailer for the upcoming screen adaptation of St.-Ex’s Little Prince.
It’s a lovely little tome that Grand Daughter recognized right away as being a part of Grandpa’s cultural firmament, a book that reads well as a child’s bedtime story or as an adult reflection on a plethora of knotty problems confronting those serious and sensitive enough to question their way of life, their relations with other people, animals and things, and the way perception can affect reality. The language is simple without being simplistic, and the illustrations, done by St.-Ex himself, are charming accompaniments to the text.
The trailer tells me right away that I won’t be going to see this film. It layers another story over the original princely narrative, nesting the Prince in a contemporary context of a controlling family, reiterating one of the central themes of the book in a most unsubtle and decontextualizing way, keying into that same sassy cliché of pre-teen angst that flavours so much of the Disnified reality superimposed on so much of the life lived by young folks in the current context. I don’t want to have to fight through the Disney layer (is it a Disney film? It hardly matters.) to get to the charm, and likely, for the price of admission, I can buy a copy of the book and read it to my grandchildren, or to myself, for that matter.
I was silly enough to read a couple of books by a man named Pierre Boule, Planet of the Apes, and Bridge On The River Kwai. If ever screen adaptations messed up the message of original novels, Boule got messed over royally. I fear that St.-Exupéry is about to get a somewhat milder dose of the same treatment. It’s sad that we can’t come up with original narratives that better reflect what film makers want to say without twisting someone else’s work into something it was never intended to be. Dr.Seuss is another recent victim of this kind of Hollywood trivialization, and it seems that Charles M. Schulz’s estate is offering up some of the same for next fall.
Worth knowing that St.-Ex’s other works are for adults and are well worth reading for their reflections on adventures, confronting danger, the agony of defeat. His own story is worth a look.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint-Exupéry
I think I’ll go draw a boa, or an elephant in a boa, or some sheep.
