Saving Mr Banks (2013

Mary Poppins passed me by when it came out. I was not young enough and not quite old enough to be able ever to say that I sneaked in to see it when the film was released. And it would be many years before it was shown on TV. In fact, the first time that I saw it was shortly after watching Saving Mr Banks. Thus completing the story for me.

Saving Mr Banks is a film with two stories tracking each other with a denouement that is cleverly created by Walt Disney himself – not just in the film but also in Mary Poppins.

Emma Thompson plays P.L.Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, which was a very popular childrens book on both sides of the pond. Although not impoverished, her agent uses the lack of funds coming in as a lever to persuade Travers to travel to America to oversee the script and music preparation that Walt Disney is commissioning. He has yet to secure the rights of her treasured book. Treasured in the sense that Travers is reluctant to have any creative embellishments made to her story. Walt Disney, played by Tom Hanks in his second big acting role this year (Captain Phillips was the other) has yet to get Travers’s signature on the contract to give him the film rights. He devotes his time humouring her and trying to win her over to allow him to use imaginative, creative methods to put the story over to a young and old audience alike – with music and song. The latter proposition is a painful one for Travers and provides a number of funny and frustrating moments for the composing and song writing team.

Two characters, Hanks and Paul Giametti, chauffeur to Travers in Hollywood, are used to good effect as vehicles for engaging with humanity with Travers to help her unpick her uncertainties. For the audience we also have the second thread of the film. This is the episodic flashback of her childhood story and her relationship with her father, and to a certain degree, her mother and aunt. This is not an untypical childhood story, set in 19^th century Australia, where adult truths are not always clear and sometimes hidden from children growing up.

Hanks has begun to understand that Travers’s reluctance to let go of her master piece (and I use that phrase in its literal sense) because the book is synonymous with her experience and relationship with her father. The film is neatly brought to its finale with Disney travelling to London to complete this analysis in her living room over a cup of tea (milk in first). This is a touching and thoughtful scene that is beautifully and sensitively filmed and scripted. We could not end without some acknowledgement of her home truths and we see Travers inviting herself to the premier of Mary Poppins (she had previously been overlooked to save any embarrassing criticisms from her). In true Hollywood tear jerk fashion we see her in the stalls acknowledging the end result with her own tears.

The acting is very good, the script is well crafted, the two stories converge properly, and most amateur psychologists will be pleased with the conclusion.

However, a spoonful of sugar will never take away the fact that Walt Disney was a ruthless businessman who knew the power of money especially when he knew the artist was in need of an income.