Saving Mr Banks Film Review.

                 Saving Mr Banks Film Review.


" It's not the children she comes to save. It's their father. It's YOUR father, Travers Goff."

Walt Disney had a testy relationship with author P.L.Travers, a pen name for Helen Goff. He was unflattering in his remarks concerning the writer of the Mary Poppins' series. He used curmudgeonly and uncompromising, prim and sexagenarian.
The film was inspired by true events and Emma Thompson's depiction of Travers shows what an irritable, difficult person she was to work with. Disney approved the following lyrics parodying Pamela's negativity: "My world was calm, well-ordered, exemplary, then came this person, with chaos in her wake, And now my life's ambitions go with one fell blow. It's quite a bitter pill to take."
Eight books were written in the Mary Poppins' series between 1934 to 1988. Walt Disney's own daughters loved the series so much that he ( played by Tom Hanks) promised them he would make a movie out of the series. It took him 20 years before he achieved his ambition to obtain the screen rights to her books.
In 1961 Travers is living in London, struggling financially. Diarmuid Russell, her agent advises her to go to Walt Disney's studios to meet Disney. She is reluctant. If she agrees to his proposition it will mean the end of her financial worries. Most of the action covers those two turbulent weeks in Los Angeles revealing more of a petulant child than a friendly, sociable professional. Her scorn and disdain was evident with the team. She admitted that the only American she liked was her chauffeur!

The film tries to show us some insight into her reluctance and unwillingness to allow Disney to use animation and to point the accusing finger at the father, Mr Banks. We see frequent flashbacks of the young Helen growing up in Allora, Queensland very close to her father, Travers Robert Goff (played by Colin Farrell) an alcoholic. She was devastated by his death and her mother's attempt to commit suicide. Mr Banks draws strong parallels with her own father and Travers had problems with how Banks was going to be depicted. Once Disney realises just how personal the Mary Poppins' stories are to Travers he opens up to her about his own difficult childhood. When she refuses to sign she leaves L.A. and returns to London. Disney is so determined that he follows her to London and persuades her to change her mind.
"George Banks and all he stands for will be saved. maybe not in life, but in imagination. Because that's what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and again."
By saving or redeeming the father, Mr Banks, it was just like cherishing the memory of her own father and saving his reputation. The project goes ahead and Travers invites herself to the American premiere with very mixed feelings. Initial scorn is soon replaced by dismay when she sees Dick Van Dyke dancing with the penguins and we see her crying her heart out at the end; George Banks' redemption has a powerful and personal significance to her. Critics believed it may have been a show of anger towards the treatment of her characters and the sense of betrayal. Others believe it was the sadness of losing her own father.
Annie Rose Buckley plays the young Travers, a delightful child, happy and imaginative until she becomes serious and worried over her father. Meryl Streep was the first choice although no-one could have portrayed her as well as Emma Thompson who described her as complex and full of contradiction, a very sad woman. She admitted to finding the role one of the most difficult she has had to act and yet she received a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and an SAG award for her role.
The film romanticizes the Disney-Travers relationship. A proposed sequel did not materialize before Disney's death in 1966. Travers refused to allow any of the other books in the series to be adapted by the Walt Disney Company.
Andrews, Disney & Travers.

The film was director by John Lee Hancock ( The Blind Side ) and shot at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank. At the end of the film a surviving reading of the actual sessions between Travers and the team is played out.
Winds in the east, mist coming in, like something is brewing, about to begin, can't put my fingers on what lies in store, but I feel what's to happen, all happened before.

REVIEW it by Carol Naylor.

Copyright 2014. Permission must be obtained from the author before any of this article review is reproduced.

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