Adaptation of The Little Prince (2015)

 

     Adaptation studies as an understudy of translation have been debated over the years by multiple critics for their purpose and their variety. In some cases, it is not possible to differentiate adaptation from translation for it does not have clear distinctions. Adaptations of books to films create different discussions like films bringing down the value of books, however, it can be argued that the books and films have many common features and with good adaptations either could be preserved in the collective culture in a way that could enrich both. This paper will argue why the movie The Little Prince by Mark Osborne (2015) is a good adaptation for fulfilling the intended outcome.

     Mikhail Bakhtin’s suggestion about novels that they ‘’combine ‘epic’ literature with modern cultural references and language – thus creating something effectively ‘new’ and appealing to a ‘modern’ audience’’ (Bakhtin,361) could be applied to movies because in a different way they combine literary heritage with ‘new’ technology and appeal to a ‘modern’ audience besides transmitting that heritage from one generation to other by visual narrative with an aim ‘’to achieve the same effect that the work originally exercised, but with an audience from a different cultural background. (Baker,11). For example, The book Le Petit Prince (1943) has been translated over 180 languages including English and the movie The Little Prince (2015) has aired in over 70 countries including Turkey. With this point of view, adaptation could be seen as a survival strategy that explained in Film Adaptation by James Naremore as:

The study of adaptation needs to be joined with the study of recycling, remaking, and every other form of retelling in the age of mechanical reproduction and electronic communication. By this means, adaptation will become part of a general theory of repetition, and adaptation study will move from the margins to the center of contemporary media studies. (15)

     There are multiple reasons why the movie The Little Prince (2015) is a good adaptation and they could be listed as:1) it keeps the original story as it is and adds a storyline around it. Thus it opens up with The Aviator’s narration, as in the book, after telling that he always looked for someone to share his story. Then the audience enters a world where we meet the protagonist The Little Girl and her mother. The Little Girl is waiting for a high-school interview, and the audience sees how her whole life is planned by her mother according to this cruel, artificial, and concrete world. However, The Little Girl’s neighbor is The Aviator and at night he throws a paper planet o her window that has the story of The Little Prince. She takes the paper and reads:
‘’Once upon a time, there was a Little Prince who lived on a planet that was scarcely bigger than himself, and who are in need of a friend.’’ After, The Aviator yells to the girl:
‘’I thought you could use a friend.’’ As she throws the story into the garbage he yells again:
‘’That’s okay. Nobody understands it anyway.’’  The audience watches a little girl who is a grown-up in a child’s body and they see how she grows from an adult to a child towards the end of the movie. Only when she sees the Little Prince in the coins that The Aviator gave her, only then she gets the intuition and wonder that could only be seen in a child. 2) As the Little Girl takes back the story from the garbage and reads, the audience sees a plane going through pages and enters a different world where The Aviator’s story is animated as paper-like characters. As the book part of the story is illustrated in stop-motion it shows The Little Girl’s imagination. This detail adds a feeling for going into a fiction world and acts as a reminder that this story is actually a book. 3)The movie’s fictionality is combined with the fictionality of the book when The Little Girl looks at the end of the glass and sees her mother on a planet like one of those in Little Prince visited. 4) When the Little Girl complains to The Aviator, he gives a message to the old readers of the book:
                         The Little Girl: I’m not sure I want to grow up anymore.
                           The Aviator: Growing up is not the problem, forgetting is.
                           The Little Girl: I definitely don’t want to forget.
                           The Aviator: I managed to grow up, and I never forgot The Little Prince.

5) Lastly, the movie finishes the story that the writer of the book left unfinished. The Aviator and the readers of the book do not know whether The Little Prince ended up with his rose or not. In the movie, The Little Girl could not accept this end and leaves The Aviator. After that, the audience sees the rest of the story as she finds The Little Prince lost in the world of grown-ups.

     The movie is a good adaptation of the world-wide known novella that has the potential to be a reference point for the younger generations. Research has done among 45 people who have not read the book but have watched the film remark that they will read the book because all the problems that delivered in the film indicate that the solutions are in the book (Rahmadani,39). In conclusion, good adaptations like this ensure to preserve both the form of the book and the meaning of the book in the collective conscious.

Works Cited

     Naremore, James. ‘Introduction’, in James Naremore (ed.), Film Adaptation (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000), p. 15.

     Bakhtin, Mikhail. ‘Discourse in the Novel’, in Emerson and Holquist, The Dialogic Imagination, p. 361.

     Rahmadani, Elsa. From Watching to Reading: A study on Film Adaptation of Antoine de Saint Exupery's The Little Prince. Diss. Universitas Andalas, 2018.
   
     Baker, Mona, and Gabriela Saldanha. Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. Routledge, 2020.