3.5 Books-Turned-Musicals out of 4
Though it’s been marketed as a film about Australian author P.L. Travers working with Walt Disney Studios in adapting Mary Poppins to the silver screen, Saving Mr. Banks is more a film about letting go and accepting the past.
Let’s get this out of the way first, though. In reality, Walt Disney was a shrewd business man, whose intellect and work enabled him to create an empire built upon the shoulders of a cartoon mouse.
P. L. Travers was difficult to work with on the best days, and the two of them working together to actually accomplish anything was miraculous on an almost Disney-sized magnitude.
The fact that the John Lee Hancock directed feature portrays Tom Hanks’ Walt Disney as a caring man attempting to fulfill a promise he made to his daughters, and not a businessman trying to capitalize on a sure-hit, is an event partly grounded in fiction. That Emma Thompson plays a repressed, closed off, and difficult to work with Travers, is entirely accurate.
A post-credit recording of Travers working with the Sherman Brothers and Don DaGradi reveals that, yes, Travers was actually much worse in real life.
Really, Saving Mr. Banks isn’t about the relationship between the Mary Poppins team and Travers. Certainly, half the film is set in Los Angeles at Walt Disney Studios, but the real meat of the plot takes place in Travers’ childhood home in Australia. Here, the viewers are introduced to her loving but growingly alcoholic father, her conflicted and struggling mother, and a dark two-year period in the lives of this family.
Played by Colin Farrell, Travers’ father (from whom she chose her pen name), Travers Robert Goff captivates both his daughter and the audience the moment he walks onscreen. The audience is introduced to Goff as he lifts up his child onto his shoulders, preparing his family for a journey from the city to the country side of Allora, Queensland. His actions trouble his wife, but the audience is moved by his daughter’s devotion.
The viewers know the family is falling apart, and that only makes the scenes in Australia that much more difficult to watch. That Travers wants the world to know that her father wasn’t a bad man breaks the hearts of many.
Intercut between the beautiful shots of Los Angeles and the heart-wrenching scenes in Allora are the sequences in a sunny conference room, where Travers discusses the film with composers Richard and Robert Sherman and writer Don DaGradi.
Jason Schwartzman, B. J. Novak, and Bradley Whitford sell themselves well as a creative team tasked with the very difficult job of invoking creativity in a writer who hates them.
Truth be told, Travers, DaGradi, and both Richard and Robert Sherman are a delight to watch, and once everyone is accustomed to everyone’s presence, the film falls into an effective rhythm of tragedy, reality, and catharsis.
Particular scenes, like the one where the quartet performs a rendition of “Let’s Fly a Kite,” allow the audience some time to recover from the tragic moments in Allora. Unlike Travers, the audience yearns for the sunshine of Los Angeles. Travers sees Disneyland as a fake representation of humanity. The audience just wants time to recover from watching her childhood crumble.
Of course, the film offers an inside look at the struggle often faced between authors and those who wish to adapt their work.
Indeed, much of the disapproval Thompson’s Travers shares with the Mary Poppins creative team are specifically due to a perceived lack of respect for the author’s work. Granted, most people wouldn’t throw scripts out the window, or redraw most of the completed sketches in a film, or even find fault with an accurate portrayal of an original character, but the point on adaptation still stands.
Once we publish our work and release it to the public sphere, do our characters remain our own? At what point does something stop being mine, and start being ours? Saving Mr. Banks poses few easy answers to these difficult questions, but strongly argues that authorial intent is irrelevant when something makes everyone happy.
Perhaps that is the best way to interpret Saving Mr. Banks.
Does it really matter that P. L. Travers hated Disney’s Mary Poppins? Does it really matter that Walt Disney was conniving and ruthless? Does it really matter that liberties are taken with history if it makes people happy?
No, it doesn’t.
Ultimately, the work we create is only ours for as long as we hold onto it. Once the public forum grabs hold of the things we love, our experiences are no longer merely ours. Our experiences become something more than what transcends the barriers of the individual.
Mary Poppins made lots of people very happy. For Walt Disney and Saving Mr. Banks, this is enough.