Saving Mr. Banks (2013)
This film retells the story of the making of Mary Poppins, and reflects upon the autobiographical aspects of storytelling, and the subsequent conflicts that arise in adaptation.
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This post is part of the ‘Rewound’ series of analyses of objects or episodes from cultural and political history. It is available in full only to paid subscribers.
Content warnings: Alcoholism; Death; Bereavement; Child abuse.
Spoiler alert: This analysis of the film Saving Mr. Banks and its themes reveals plot details for the purpose of enhancing that analysis.
Saving Mr. Banks depicts the strained relationship between P. L. Travers (Emma Thompson), author of the Mary Poppins book series, on the one hand, and Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) and his colleagues at Disney Studios on the other. It is also about P. L. Travers’ own relationship with her father, Travers Goff (Colin Farrell), who died when she was a child.
In 1961, the financially struggling, London-based author is convinced by her long-suffering publisher Diarmuid Russell (Ronan Vibert) to accept Disney’s invitation to travel to Los Angeles and collaborate in the cinematic adaptation of her Mary Poppins stories. Travers remains deeply sceptical about the project and repeatedly clashes with screenwriter Don DaGradi (Bradley Whitford) and song-writing brothers Richard M. (Jason Schwartzman) and Robert B. (B. J. Novak) Sherman. She is nonetheless gradually won over by her kindly chauffer Ralph (Paul Giamatti) and by Walt Disney himself, and his creative vision. However, her mood is soured by the proposed inclusion of an animated sequence in the film, which she had been explicitly promised would not occur; she refuses to go ahead with the adaptation, and returns to London.
The relaying of these events intersects with scenes from P. L. Travers’ childhood in early twentieth-century Australia. Aged seven, the author, real name Helen Goff (Annie Rose Buckley), moves with her parents and younger sister to Allora in Queensland. Travers Goff is a loving father with a penchant for imaginative play, but struggles with the strains of his job as a bank manager, and with worsening alcoholism, placing great strain on Helen’s mother, Margaret (Ruth Wilson). Helen is left heartbroken when her father subsequently succumbs to tuberculosis.
Back in the 1960s, Walt Disney learns following P. L. Travers’ departure about her earlier life, and realises that her fastidiousness about details in the Mary Poppins film owes to how her books draw on her own experiences. This includes her having based the character of George Banks, father of the two children Mary Poppins is nanny to, on her own father. He travels over to London and persuades her that he can bring her stories to life on screen in a manner befitting the original material. When the film is finished, Disney does not invite P. L. Travers to its premiere in Los Angeles, fearing what her public reaction to it might be; but she shows up at the event anyway, watches the film for the first time, and is visibly moved.
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