Saving Mr. Banks (2013) is a pursuit of a promise.
When Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) made a promise to his daughters that he will bring Mary Poppins to the big screen, he must have not foreseen that it would take him 20 years to realize it.
The film recounts of Walt Disney’s quest to acquire the film rights of a beloved children’s book, Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson). However, Travers is adamant. She loathes the ideas of the creative team – no red, no cartoons, not musicale, etc. With the curmudgeon attitude of Travers, it is close to say that the team is in for a mission impossible.
Travers’ character is mystifying. Her childhood experiences as interweaved on the films’ sequences will make you hate but understand her at the same time. Thompson delivers superb acting. She is Mrs. Travers.
The jovial Disney has a childhood story of his own but did not despair. Instead, he creates “the happiest place on earth”, Disneyland. His personal experience opened the mind and heart of Travers. Hanks successfully brought the larger than life essence of Walt Disney to the screens.
In the development of Mary Poppins on screen, other characters in Don DaGradi (Bradley Whitford) – the screenwriter, Richard and Robert Sherman (Jason Schwartzman and B.J. Novak) – the music composers and Ralph (Paul Giamatti) – Travers’ assigned limousine driver also gave stunning performances.
The director, John Lee Hancock, is able to bring us to the nostalgia of early Disney cartoons and a glimpse of what Travers’ (might) have thought and felt during Disney’s pursuit, working with the creative team and after finally signing the agreement.
In some ways, we can relate to the reluctances of Travers as in our own experience of watching films, we vehemently show our disgust through our reviews when a beautifully written book is poorly depicted on the big screen.
Mary Poppins will forever be loved. But behind Mary Poppins is a melancholic (basing from the character of P.L. Travers in the film) writer and a passionate quest of a magnate for which little have been known before Saving Mr. Banks.
_
© rooks 2014
cruisingcherokee 