“Saving Mr. Banks” is A Story Within A Story

Three and A Half Stars

I think "Saving Mr. Banks" is a really touching story about my favorite kind of people, storytellers. “Saving Mr. Banks” is the story of P.L. Travers, who wrote the Mary Poppins books. She sells the book to Disney, because she mainly needs the money. Yet, she also, through the process of selling and visiting Disney, has it bring up many things that she remembers from a painful childhood. Often an author sees what they had written differently than those who adapt it. The film isn’t really too much about Disney and the creative process as much as it’s about the childhood of the creator of the works Disney is adapting. I was a bit surprised at how much the film was about P.L. Traver’s childhood. The scenes with the ever stubborn author driving the screenwriter and the Sherman Brothers ,the movie’s song writers, crazy are delightful at times, and at other times, a bit sad because she is seeing this adaptation differently then they are. Emma Thompson is great as the stoic Travers, who is unmoved by the wonder and magic of Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) and his crew. She is simply in this for the money, but also she is concerned about them making a cartoon of her story. Her story is really more about her personal history then her fictional one. Much like J.K. Rowling will tell you Harry Potter is about her depression then simply wands and magic, P.L. Travers sees Mary Poppins as about her awful childhood.

Walt Disney doesn’t quite understand what is wrong with Travers, the charming fellow he is. He has charmed the whole world with his stories and characters, so why not her? In fact, her real name isn’t P.L. Travers and she really isn’t British. She hides behind this all, because of her less than staller childhood with an alcoholic father. Her father is played by Colin Ferrell and is his best role in years. He doesn’t seem like a bad man, as he loves his daughters. However, he can’t seem to get out of his own way, as he is constantly drinking. The script by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith goes back and fourth between P.L. Travers as an adult and herself as a child, spending much time in her childhood. The film’s shoots of her childhood are beautifully done. The little girl who plays Travers as a child does a great job, too. That should be noted.

One of my favorite aspects of his film is it’s understanding that the people who create magical tales are often the least magical people themselves. It takes a lot for someone to create fantasy, as it really is an alternative to his or her real life. Fantasy is an important escape, and this film seems to make the case for the importance of escapism. The escapism of writing Mary Poppins is so important to Travers that she cuts off the very real people who care about her. However, Walt Disney himself embraces the escapism of his own world, and doesn’t see why Travers doesn’t either.

I don’t know if this film is entirely what happened as it is produced by Disney Pictures, but I do give them credit for going a bit edgier in this picture. Travers and Disney seem to have a lot in common, however, when we come in the end, we realize that the difference is Walt chose to move on and Travers didn’t. My favorite scene in the film is that conversation between Walt and Travers. Also, I love the scene where the Disney driver, played by Paul Giamatti, says his disabled daughter gave him the Mary Poppins book before he left and he couldn’t stop reading. It made me think of J.K. Rowling, and it made me think that these types of storytellers haven’t really changed much in many years.

It is a serious, somber movie for the Disney Studios, and that’s what surprised me the most. This movie is a somber tale for anyone who’s ever tried to tell a story and the reasons why they tried to tell it in the first place. Sometimes we tell ourselves stories to cope, but at the end of the day, the most important story is our own.