My Experience Watching Saving Mr. Banks
Every little kid loves Mary Poppins. I don't care if you are a boy or a girl. You like Mary Poppins. No question about it. In fact, you love Mary Poppins so much that you want her as YOUR nanny. Who cares about Jane and Michael. They can manage without her. You are taking Mary Poppins for yourself.
Mary Poppins is known for being one of the most kind and loving characters that came out of a Disney movie. Children that have seen this film hold this wonderful nanny close to their hearts, similar to how P.L. Travers did. In fact, P.L. Travers felt so close to Mary Poppins and the characters of her novel that she considered them family. This is the very reason that she was so hesitant about giving Walt Disney the rights to make a movie out of her book. This hesitance caused for a roller coaster of a journey when creating the film Mary Poppins. This very journey is documented in the gorgeous film Saving Mr. Banks.
Saving Mr. Banks is a historical drama film from 2013 about the development of Mary Poppins as well as a partial biography of Helen Lyndon Goff (Later changed to Pamela Lyndon Travers and then her pen name P.L. Travers). Saving Mr. Banks starts off with a scene in P.L. Travers home in London where she agrees to go to Los Angeles to speak with Disney about the film rights to her books. From then on the movie is split in half into flashbacks from Travers's childhood and the present where Travers and Disney's team are developing the film. Saving Mr. Banks stars Emma Thomson as the harsh P.L. Travers and Tom Hanks as Walt Disney. Several other main characters in the film are Paul Giamatti, Jason Schwartzman, Bradley Whitford, Colin Farrell and Annie Rose Buckley. John Lee Hancock directed the film while Alison Owen, Ian Collie and Philip Steuer produced it.
I was initially never really desired to see this movie. When it first came out, I had heard that it was boring and not something that you NEED to drive out to the movie theatre to see. Also, I hadn't seen Mary Poppins in years so I'd forgotten about how great the movie was. Two nights ago, my mom and I were sitting in the family room and she goes to all of our families television recordings. My mom suggested that we watch it that night considering there was not much else to do, and because she wanted to see it. I am SO glad that she recorded Saving Mr. Banks. I loved the movie, and regret not going to see it sooner. From my understanding, this movie is mostly historically correct and documents well what really happened at Disney Studios in 1964. However, the history of P.L. Travers's childhood is most accurate. Her childhood was very strange as well as very tough. I love how Saving Mr. Banks took those awful events from her childhood, showed how they influenced Travers to write the Mary Poppins books, and then displayed how these meaningful books shaped an incredible movie.
I wanted to pick the flashback from Travers's childhood where her father is making his speech at the country fair as the scene that I talked about in this post but weirdly enough I can't find it online. So I will just put a link to "lighter" scene at the end of this post. This flashback is to when Travers is at a fair with her family. Her father is her best friend throughout her childhood until he passes from an illness (During the movie, I looked up what he died from. It is just noted he died from "Influenza"). He is her inspiration to follow her dreams and to stay young as long as possible. Her father suffered from alcoholism which progressively gets worse throughout the film until he passes. Her father needed to make a speech at the country fair for the bank he worked at. Before the speech, he stops and drinks with his friends to ease his nerves. By the time it is his turn to speak, he is drunk. Basically, his speech is a train-wreck and he embarrasses himself and his family in front of all those people. Towards the end of the speech he coughs up blood into his handkerchief and then falls off the stage. The reason I wanted to pick this scene to talk about is because I wanted to talk about how Travers sticks by her dad no matter what. This is a very traumatizing event for a child to see, yet Travers still thinks of her dad as a hero for the remainder of her childhood. This shows how special her relationship was with him until he got sick, and started drinking. A lot of this could be dramatized by Disney, but I think that this had an impact on how Travers wrote the Mary Poppins books.
As far as cinimatic elements goes, this is a very light colored film. The whole movie seems to be in pastel colors. There aren't ever very harsh, dark, or loud colors in the film for extended periods of time. The only time I can think of there being loud colors displayed is when Disney takes Travers to Disney Land. I believe that these color choices were done purposely. I also think that this was done to send a message tot he viewers. In the film, Travers tells Disney that she never wants there to be the color red in the movie. This just is an example of how there is a manipulation of colors in Saving Mr. Banks and therefore in Mary Poppins. In addition, since Saving Mr. Banks is made up of a lot of flashbacks, they wanted the film to look almost "dream-like". Overall, the color choices in this movie are meant to send a message to the viewer about the story itself and the tone of the film.
I love this movie. I believe that is has an unlimited amount of meaning behind it for movie Mary Poppins. Unfortunately, contrary to the film Travers was mostly unsatisfied to how Mary Poppins came out for several different reasons. She was very resistant to many ideas about the film from the director and from Disney. She did not get her way about many of the things she complained about so I think that no matter how the movie came out, she would still be dissatisfied. I know that P.L. Travers would most likely not approve of this film as well, but I still think that this was an important movie to make.