Saving Mr. Banks

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

One might not think a story about the creator of Mary Poppins would be an appropriate subject for a film analysis. But you would be denying yourself a rewarding experience since Saving Mr. Banks presents an interesting psychological study of a woman who was torn between redemptive fantasy and unsentimental practical reality, and who used fiction and eventually a connection with Walt Disney to reconcile these opposing forces.

The movie takes many liberties with what actually happened. The author of the Mary Poppins books never did like the movie version much, Walt Disney didn’t take her on a tour of Disneyland, and he didn’t visit her in London. But what matters is the way the story portrays character and theme, since the film is an adaptation of the truth, and comments on the nature of art, as the last post on The Pianist noted how that movie used music to comment on the creative process.

 The film begins with a shot of the clouds, and the transitions between scenes later also inhabit the sky, as flying becomes a metaphor for escape into an imaginative world not anchored by unhappy realities on earth. As the music from the Oscar- winning song from Mary Poppins, Chim Chim Cheree, plays, we hear the haunting words that open that film, here spoken by an unseen Travers Goff (Colin Farrell), father of future writer P. L. Travers (Emma Thompson, in a role that should have been nominated for a Best Actress Oscar). He speaks them quietly: “Winds in the east/ Mist coming in/ Like something is brewing/ About to begin/ Can’t put me finger/ On what lies in store/ But I feel what’s to happen/ All happened before.” By the end of the film these words are repeated after they take on more meaning, as we shall see. As a child, Travers’s real name is Helen, but her father called her Ginty (Annie Rose Buckley), who we see as a young child looking up at the sky. There is a cut to the adult Pamela Travers looking up as did her younger self, remembering her early life. It’s 1961 there is a family picture close to her which includes a shot of the father. The flashbacks throughout the movie demonstrate how Travers is consumed by the past, and the scenes showing her childhood become less separated from the current time period as her life story, the story of Mary Poppins, and the movie to be made of her creation are so intertwined.

Diarmuid Russell (Ronan Vibert), Travers’s literary agent, shows up at her London townhouse. She notes looking out her window that a cherry blossom looks like a pink cloud on a stick. The observation shows how she transforms reality through subjective perception, which is what a fictional writer does. He thinks they were going to a business meeting, but she canceled. He says that she has no more money (the need for such dragged her father’s life into alcoholism, as is later shown) since royalties have dried up and she refuses to write more books. She is very formal, saying not to call her “Pamela,” but instead prefers, “Mrs. Travers.” She dismisses the idea that they are friends, despite their long relationship, showing her rather cold personality. Her anti-socialism and stern disposition create her psychological armor which protects her from a world she sees as a danger to her emotions. There have been overtures for twenty years to make a film based on her character of Mary Poppins, and now Walt Disney has given her script approval and an assurance of no animation. She does become emotional because she is protective of Mary. She decides to go for a two week stay to assess the circumstances of making a movie before signing over the rights.

She says something about wanting to keep her house, which has nothing to do with the present. But it does to the past as there is a cut to her childhood as Ginty makes a tiny house out of flowers, which again stresses the idea of imaginative play. Her father comes over and plays with her, pretending to be looking for the Royal Princess Ginty McFeatherfluffy. The name sounds like a comical fairy tale character that he has created (the emphasis is on make-believe and invention). Even the name sounds like something that flies above the earth, which ties in with the shots of the sky and possibly the idea of flying to freedom. He says he promises to never lose her, a point that is taken up later in connection with writing.

Travers is difficult with others, not having exited the comfort zone of her London life in quite a while. She is on the plane and complains that there is not enough room for her bag which she insists must be above her seat. The woman who volunteers to move her own bag to accommodate Travers is even treated harshly when Travers asks her if her child will be a “nuisance” on an eleven-hour flight. This crankiness comes from a woman who wrote children’s stories, thus showing the duality in her personality. As the plane is ready to leave, she says to herself, “I hope we crash,” so pessimistic is she about this trip. (She doesn't appear to relish being in an airplane, so negativity about flying in real life contrasts with her inner desire to soar above the mundane world which is shown by endowing Mary Poppins with the ability to use her umbrella to fly).

In a scene from the past, the Goff family in 1906 Australia is leaving what used to be their house with its staff (maybe that is also why Travers said she wants to keep her house, because she didn’t like being uprooted as a child) for a new job in a new place. For Ginty it at first seems like an adventure since her dad has them playfully marching to the train station. The mother, Margaret (Ruth Wilson), seems sad about leaving the more prominent area for a faraway place. But then even Ginty seems unhappy as she looks out the back of the train as it moves away from her previous home. As the camera pulls back, we see a shot of the father taking a swig from a whiskey bottle, the first sign of the self-destructive way he escapes the harshness of reality.

 The smoke from the train turns into clouds in the sky as the plane carrying Travers flies through them. She lands in Los Angeles and Ralph (Paul Giamatti), whose name we don’t learn until much later, is there to drive her. He says, “the sun came out just to say hello to you.” Her no-nonsense response is “Don’t be preposterous.” When she asks what the city smells like he says “jasmine,” but she says, “chlorine and sweat.” His fanciful ways subconsciously remind her of her father and the sadness of losing him, which she wants to suppress. As they drive she has a look on her face that implies she continues to not like the smell of her surroundings. In the back of the limo alcohol decanters clink, and she says “absurd,” which possibly is also a negative reaction due to her alcoholic father. She then shuts the sliding panel between herself and Ralph so she won’t hear his conversation as she tries to maintain her isolation from others who she feels inflict on her a cheerful perspective on life.

Her hotel room is full of Disney merchandise, such as stuffed animals and balloons. Again, these representations of fantasy are upsetting to her down-to-earth protective facade. She sees a fruit basket and immediately says “no pears,” throwing them out into the swimming pool. There is a flashback as they approach the new family home which is a run-down rural house that the father calls “a palace” and an old horse a “mighty steed.” He tells his wary wife that they will “make beautiful memories here, my angel.” His use of “beautiful” and “angel” (someone who flies in the clouds?) show what one might say is optimism, but his continuous pretending demonstrates living in denial about reality, and can seem irresponsible and reckless in an adult. Back in 1961 Travers puts on the TV and sees Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) doing a bit with Tinkerbell (an imaginary creature that flies) and fairy dust making him fly (again a reference about escaping off of the earth). Travers turns off the TV saying that is how she deals with Walt’s fantastic ideas, refusing to expose herself to flights of fancy.

When Ralph picks her up and says the sun is shining again, she says she would rather be given credit for bringing the rain, which she argues is not sad because it brings life. He counters with “so does the sun.” She tells him to be quiet. She won’t allow for the fact that rain comes from gray skies and keeps people inside, and the sun allows one to be outdoors and engage in the world in warmth and light. She has become so glum that she doesn’t allow for positive feelings in her real (as opposed to literary) life anymore.

She is met at Disney Studios by Don DaGradi (Bradley Whitford) the movie’s writer, whom she discourages by saying she might not sign off on a script. There is also Richard (Jason Schwartzman) and Robert Sherman (B. J. Novack) who are writing the movie’s music and lyrics. Her attitude is very negative as she says that her story does not lend itself to musical “chirping and prancing.” She refuses to take a tour of the studio to show off its assets, saying, “nobody likes a show-off.” Her comment again stresses her reactionary attitude to performing, which is what epitomized her father. Indeed, movies themselves, being showy spectacles, are antithetical to her restrained character.

She keeps calling him “Mr. Disney,” but DaGradi and Disney say to call him “Walt” because they are all on a first name basis there. Their informal, trusting attitude is counter to her reserved, protective stance. Disney says that many years ago his two daughters read her books and were delighted. He said a father can’t break a promise to his children, which is why he has been persistent in trying to get the rights to her books to make a movie. His desire to keep a vow to his children is also suspicious to her, since for now she feels that her father did not keep his, as was noted earlier, when he said he would never be separated from her. Indeed, Disney’s bringing to visual and auditory life a world of escapist imagination is what she has run away from in her real life. But, Disney is actually the perfect person for her to deal with since he has merged the two worlds by being a practical businessman who makes his living in the fanciful, as she has done, at least in the past, with her writings.

Travers argues that Mary Poppins does not sing, but instead does recitations. She is “not a giddy woman. She doesn’t jig about.” Travers says singing is “frivolous,” and is “wholly unnecessary in a governess.” Disney and his team want to accentuate the fun of being a child and finding the child inside of adults, but she lost that sense of childhood enjoyment in her life because of how the harshness of life destroyed her child-like father. She says to Disney that she doesn’t want Mary turned into “one of your silly cartoons.” This statement, although honest, is rather insulting. He promises that the film will not be animated, and he hopes to win her over to his view of the movie. To her, Mary Poppins and the Banks are “family,” and she is worried about allowing anyone to interfere with those she has invented that gives her comfort which her real family was not able to sustain. On the way out of his office he says let’s make something “wonderful,” and she questions if that’s possible outside of her own closely held fictional world.

With her mouth in its perpetually turned down expression, Travers complains to DaGradi and the Shermans that all of the pastries brought to the script room express unnecessary “jollification.” Kids love sweets but in her life she is not in a childlike state of mind. She calls it “vulgar,” and says the amount of food could save a starving nation. She is funny in her insults. When they say the character of Bert will be played by Dick Van Dyke because he is one of the “greats,” she says actors Olivier, Burton, and Guinness fit under that category, not a song-and-dance man like Van Dyke, which stresses her reverence for the “serious” artist.

They start singing along to the “Chim Chim Cheree” song which uses the made-up word “responstible” to rhyme with “constable.” She says comically “unmake it up.” Travers is upset by the song “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” because, again, it is a fabricated word. In a flashback, her father pretends that a chicken is a magically transformed aunt. He says she is their mother’s “horrendiferous sister.” Her father would use made-up words, and so we understand her current antagonism to the Shermans’ invented vocabulary as it conjures up the painful memory of her lost, playful father. In another flashback which emphasizes transformation, the father rides up on the family “steed,” and tells Ginty that the horse is really a secret Uncle Albert. He says that a witch turned him into a nag because she hated the sound of his laugh. He says Albert can only be fixed by teaching “the witch to be happy again.” This statement could be the theme of the movie, because it refers to what must happen to Travers to move forward.

In the limo, Ralph’s statement that “a leisurely stroll is a gift,” is a response to Travers’s complaint that she sees nobody walking in LA. She seems impressed by his poetic observation, which shows a warming up of her attitude toward him. When he says the ride through the panoramic view of the hillside is beautiful, she says dismissively, “If you like that sort of thing.” We then see a flashback of her riding with her dad on the horse through a field of wildflowers. She has these memories which should be happy ones but instead give her pain because of their association with what she has lost.

At the studio, she is upset that the drawing of the Banks house looks too “grand,” and that they are normal, everyday people. They have changed Mrs. Banks into a suffragette, but DaGradi and the Shermans wonder why would she be leaving the children so much if she doesn’t have something to do. Travers defends Mrs. Banks, probably feeling like she is protecting the memory of her own mother. She also complains that Mr. Banks has a mustache which is what Disney wanted (as we learn later, Disney has his own father issues, and his dad wore a mustache). Her story is very personal so even the facial hair matters. There is a flashback that has her father, looking in a mirror, shaving to allow for “silky” kisses for his daughter. Even though it is many years later, his saying “swish” when shaving makes her say the same word when Travers cleans the bathroom mirror.

There is a memory of Ginty’s father leaving work because he wanted to play with his girls. He tries to appease his wife by saying he would make up the work hours later. He offers his wife a pear, and this scene (and later, one other) shows why Travers can’t tolerate the reminder of that fruit in her adult life. While they play, Margaret pulls a bottle of whiskey out of his coat pocket which shows how he is skipping work and escaping his grown-up responsibilities with alcohol consumption. When he and his wife are together she asks if her sister, Ellie, (who is the “horrendiferous sister” in his story, and who represents a fixer of problems) should visit to help out. But he is very much against it, saying he will “endure” the job at the bank. This real-life experience, of course, finds its way into the Mary Poppins story, and explains why the last name of the father in Travers’s fiction is “Banks.”

Back in 1961, Travers complains that the songs of the Shermans have lyrics that are too “giddy and carefree,” just like Disney’s theme park. After singing, “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,” the Shermans argue that the way the music goes up on the word “down” makes its sound ironic, unexpected, like Mary herself, who goes up the staircase, and reflects how Mary is magical while acting practical, which of course reconciles those two worlds. Travers says that the lyrics are simplifying life, “encouraging children to face the world unarmed.” She says that Mary Poppins is the enemy of whimsy and sentimentality. Travers argues that Mary is “truthful.” As to the children, Travers says that Mary doesn’t sugarcoat “the darkness in the world … She prepares them for it.” Travers says that a room doesn’t magically clean itself. She argues that one must be responsible for doing tasks that will prepare oneself for the future. She felt her father prevented her from dealing with the grim side of life by providing her with his fantasy world. She throws the script out the window to symbolize that it has no weight, no “gravitas.” Disney counters by questioning how she can criticize the use of “whimsy,” when she invented a woman “who sent a flying nanny with a talking umbrella to save the children.” Travers asks if he really thinks that Mary is there to save the children. She walks out because they have missed the point, which, of course, is implied by the title of the movie.

A flashback shows Ginty’s father in a drunken rant at the bank where he works. Ginty witnesses this scene as the boss fires him. She asks if he has lost his job, “again.” That last word shows that she knows of his failures, but has been going along with his fantasies to cover them up. The boss, with the child present, reconsiders and says that he won’t fire him. But he tells the father that he should act responsibly for his daughter’s sake. In a field, an open setting suggesting freedom as opposed to the enclosed walls of the bank, he tells Ginty that this world is “just an illusion.” For him, living in the realm of imagination is the way to truly inhabit one’s soul. He says that if they hold onto that belief, “they can’t break us,” and can’t “make us endure their reality. Bleak and bloody as it is.” He goes on to say that “money, money, money,” when it becomes so important, “it’ll bite you on the bottom.” He is a tragic figure, who has an idealist’s outlook that is crushed by a mercenary world. He says his statement while taking a drink and she has ice cream, contrasting his adult destructive denial of grown-up life with a sugar escape that is innocent and appropriate for a child.

Back in LA, Travers says on the phone to her agent that her subconscious might be targeting her, giving her odd dreams, for wanting to consider giving Mary up. She accurately describes what is happening to her, although she may not be completely aware of its deeper implications, when she says, “I’m at war with myself.” She repeats her father’s words to her about the evils of money, which she feels drove her to this place. So, she is of two minds concerning the fanciful and the practical when it comes to what she feels about her father. There is a bit of a turning point here, as she grabs the large Mickey Mouse doll and hugs it in bed, like a child, seeking an imaginary friend to help protect her from the scary things in life. So, contrary to her earlier argument, sometimes “whimsy” is life-enabling for a child, and the child inside of the grown-up. After hours, in the script room, Disney visits Richard Sherman, still at the piano, as Robert sleeps on a couch. Disney says he understands what Travers is going through. He couldn’t give up Mickey when he was starting out. To him, just like for her, a person’s creations are one’s family.

Back in Australia, Ginty pretends to be a hen laying eggs. Her father thinks it’s marvelous and says he can see her sprouting feathers, so strong is his imaginary powers. Margaret, calling her by her real name, Helen, tells her to set the dinner table, and he yells at his wife when she repeats the order, because he doesn’t want his daughter’s imagination thwarted. He tells her never to stop dreaming, and that she “can be anyone you want to be.” He’s telling her that her imagination will give her the power to lift herself over entrenched obstacles. She says she wants to be just like him, but he wisely warns her not to be. He realizes that he has not been able to find a way to balance the world of the child and the one of the adult inside of himself. He goes into his bed, cries, and gulps alcohol.

As the Shermans sing the song in the bank that satirizes the saving of “tuppence,” Travers reminisces about a day at a fair where her father, who is the bank manager, is supposed to give a speech. Ginty looks for him, and finds him drinking in a tent. The memories interlace with the singing in the script room as the two worlds blend together. Her father looks sweaty, slurring his speech, coughing, displaying exaggerated speech. As he talks about the importance of the bank, the singing sarcastically deals with the same topic. The father brings Ginty up on the stage, says she has a bank account, and mistakenly says the crowd should give her “a drink” for being so practical. His words undermine the practicality of what he is supposed to be advocating. He then says, embarrassingly, that he must “relieve” himself, and falls off the stage, showing his daughter how his defiance of the “bleak and bloody” world has not allowed him to “endure their reality.”

Travers is upset about how they are depicting Mr. Banks as being too cruel, as she now begins to feel disturbed by how she has exiled her own father from her life. She talks with Ralph outside and he reveals that he has a daughter in a wheelchair, and that is why he cares about the weather being sunny, so that she can be outside. She sees how her driver was dealing with, not escaping from, a terrible reality by trying to be positive. She is feeling guilty because of how she dealt with her father as he experienced liver failure due to his alcoholism. In a flashback, he asks Ginty to find him some alcohol, which she discovers. Later Ginty’s mother goes to her and says that she knows that her daughter gave the liquor to her father, enabling his self-destructive way of dealing with life. Her mother tells her to look after her sisters and walks away in her nightgown and goes into the river. Ginty follows her on the horse and goes into the river, stopping her from committing suicide. In this memory we see how she was able to save at least one parent by dealing with the reality of the situation, not running away from it. These incidents may be why she moved away from trying to live like her father in life, but kept his spirit alive in her writings.

As Ginty tends to her father, she says “winds from the east” which she later uses as the clue that Mary Poppins is arriving in her story. In real life, it is code for the arrival of Aunt Ellie, Margaret’s sister, who becomes the prototype for Mary Poppins. She has the umbrella with the parrot head, which talks in the story. She says that she will fix everything. She even has the carpetbag, which is the basis for the bottomless bag in the story, from which she pulls out numerous treatments and a pineapple. Even the line in the story about closing “your mouth, we are not a codfish,” is uttered by her. Ellie says, “spit spot,” too, like Mary, so she is strict, but with a bit of a smile and playfulness. As the mother and girls help Ellie clean up, Ginty sees blood coming out of her coughing father’s mouth. She has tuppence and he asks that she buy him pears, which she later drops, and which cements her current aversion for the fruit, so strong is the influence of the past on her present.

In LA, Disney, despite her objections, gets Ralph to drive Travers to Disneyland. He wants her to ride on the carousel, which she declines. He says, “there’s a little bit of a child in all of us.” But she says not in her, denying that youthful fun that she has buried inside of her. Despite his advocating impractical diversion, he shows his practical side by passing out pre-signed autograph cards and saying he brought her there for monetary gain, betting twenty bucks that he could get her on a ride. He shows his embodiment of both the pragmatic and the fanciful.

DaGradi says that they thought about what Travers had said about Mr. Banks. They agreed with her that Mr. Banks is not cruel, so they have a new ending. Mr. Banks fixes the broken kite and they perform “Let’s go and fly a kite.” She is pleased about the change. When DaGradi sees how she is moving her feet to the music he takes her hand and dances with her. They finish singing together, as Disney is happily surprised to find that she loves the song. It points back to the first image of the film and the transitions in the movie which show being in the clouds and pretending to fly as a metaphor for mentally escaping from the harshness of life.

However, Travers learns there will be animated penguins in the film and she feels betrayed by Disney. He says that the film only has a cartoon sequence but most of the movie consists of live action. She is angry, flings the unsigned contract at him, and asks for Ralph to pick her up. Ralph tells her that he didn’t know who she was, but his daughter does. She gave him one of her books, he read it and loved it, and he shows it to her. She offers to sign it, and, since she didn’t even ask his name before, she finally discovers it now. She says she is Pamela, offering friendship, rare for her, by using her first name. She tells him about some great people, such as Einstein and Van Gogh, who had disabilities, including Disney himself, who she says has concentration and hyperactivity problems, but they still excelled. She tells Ralph that she should tell his daughter Jane she “can do anything that anyone else can do.” This statement is a variation on what her father told her about being whatever she wanted to be. Instead of turning her back on something her father preached, she is now embracing it.

Travers has returned to England, and Disney finds out by looking at her travel documents that her real name is Helen Goff. In a flashback which shows her father has died, Aunt Ellie says to her sister that they should not hide the existence of death from Ginty. As the young girl looks at her dead father in his bed, she yells at her aunt because she said she would fix everything. In real life, not all things can be made better. Perhaps that is why the adult Travers in fiction created a character based on her aunt but who she transformed into a person who could truly solve problems that can’t be solved in reality.

Disney follows Travers to England. He says that she misjudged him. She thinks that he just wanted Mary Poppins as “another brick in my kingdom.” She wanted him to disappoint her and set him up to do that in her mind. But he says he wouldn’t have pursued her work for twenty years just for money. He says that life disappoints her, but Mary Poppins doesn’t. She counters by saying that is because she isn’t real. But he says to his daughters she’s real, as she is to so many others. What he is really saying is what we all do when we suspend disbelief to empathize with a story and its characters since their plight resonates with ours. We then exist in their world in our imagination.

Disney says he had his own Mr. Banks, his father, and he, too, was projecting a father figure onto the character. His father was a tough businessman and wanted to save every penny, which is what the bankers in Mary Poppins advise. He tells Travers that it was very cold and snowy in Missouri delivering his father’s newspapers. And if he didn’t do his job, Disney’s mother warned her son that his father would punish him and his brother with a beating. He says that he is tired of being consumed by that history and asks her doesn’t she want to live a life “that isn’t dictated by the past?” He shows his insight when he tells her that Mary doesn’t come to save the children, but is there to save “the father.” Which is what Travers tries to do in her fiction, creatively trying to save her dad. She took his first name as her last. She now calls Disney by his first name which shows him making the connection to her dad, only Disney has been able to be practical and fanciful, too. He says that her books show forgiveness, and she has to forgive herself. In one of the flashbacks, when her father was dying she gave him a poem, a piece of imaginative writing. He was feeling the need to discourage her from following in his footsteps and said it wasn’t “Yeats.” She said earlier that she didn’t want to let him down again when she considered signing over the rights of her book. She has sentenced herself for life because she feels guilty about disappointing her father. Disney tells her that her father’s life will be redeemed as many will watch their movie. Disney is saying that redemption is what “storytellers do.” They can instill hope by rewriting real life stories by using imagination.

She signs the contract with the Mickey doll sitting opposite her, as she makes peace with Disney’s version of her work. She also starts writing again, after getting a creative transfusion. Disney doesn’t invite her to the premier because he is worried she might undermine the movie by her disparaging ways. Her agent realizes that she wasn’t invited and says Mary wouldn’t stand for that. Travers actually does want to go, and shows up anyway. Ralph rides her to the theater. Mickey escorts her in, showing a compromise with the fanciful. She is still not that thrilled with the dancing penguins but likes the “Step in Time” song. She cries as the character of Bert tells the Banks children that he feels badly for their father because he is being caged in a bank, which is how Travers remembers what happened to her dad. She sings along with the kite song and as Chim Chim Cheree plays she sees her father saying he will never leave her, because as we see he lives on in her imagination, her writings, and the movie.

What storytelling does is recreate and transform through imagination what all humans have experienced in common in the past and will again in the future: life; death; love; hate; joy; sadness, etc. By refreshing these tales they become relevant again. So, the film ends as it began, with the same words: “Can’t put me finger/ On what lies in store/ But I feel what’s to happen/ All happened before.”

The next film is Paper Moon.