Saving Mr Banks is a film about Walt Disney’s pursuit of the film rights to the novel ‘Mary Poppins’ written by P.L Travers. Tom Hanks plays the role of legend Walt Disney; incidentally this is the first time that Disney has been depicted in a dramatic film. Emma Thompson plays the role of the novelist P.L Travers, the film documents their testy partnership during the projects pre-production in 1961.
Disney promised his daughters that he would make Mary Poppins in to a movie, not realising it would take 20 years to realise the dream. Travers proved to be very prickly and demanded contractual script and character control, this proved to be very difficult for both Disney’s idea of the film adaptation but also those in the creative team – Screenwriter Don DaGradi and the composers – brothers Richard and Robert Sherman. During the visit she was played songs by the Sherman brothers, which ended up in the 1964 film, such as A Spoonful of Sugar and Let’s Go Fly a Kite. Their original score and song (Chim-Chim-Cher-ee) won Oscars® at the 1965 ceremony (the film won five awards of its thirteen nominations). Saving Mr Banks has been directed by John Lee Hancock and the film is already being tipped for Oscar success. It is released in UK cinemas from 29th November 2013.
Finally in 1961 Travers travels to Hollywood from London to meet Disney and talk about his desire to bring the beloved Mary Poppins to screen. Unfortunately Travers is suspect of Disney’s intentions for the film, fearing it will be turned in to a cartoon at worst or a film with lots of twinkling at best. Over time Disney understands the meaning of the characters to Travers and understands how the struggles with her past are connected to the book. The film flashes back to 1906 in Australia that shows her aspirations to write and also where she gets the inspiration for her book characters. The muse for the story’s main character – Mr Banks was moulded on her own tormented father, a banker who met an untimely death. Someone she loved and admired and had made for a caring father who instilled affection and enlightenment. Disney hints at problems of his own with his father in the early 20th Century Midwest and so on this point they come together and she understands his motives for wanting to make the film.
Speaking about his role as Walt Disney, Tom Hanks said: “In a lot of ways Mary Poppins was the crowning achievement of everything he did, it won all the Academy Awards, it was a huge monster hit and it was the last movie that he truly was hands-on.”
Speaking to the BBC, Thompson said she had found the role of PL Travers really difficult. “The Australian-born British author was interesting, because she was full of contradictions. What was fun was inhabiting someone who refused to let the fairy dust work. I loved her belligerence; I loved playing her rudeness, and her honesty.”
Emma said she had wanted to work with Tom Hanks for years “then suddenly along came this very grown up drama about two artists who are both very complicated people, who expressed their traumas in very different ways, because they both had extremely difficult childhoods”.
The cast also includes Collin Farrell who co-stars as Travers’ doting dad, Goff; Bradley Whitford plays screenwriter Don DaGradi.
One of the reasons that Travers eventually agrees to go to Hollywood and potentially sell the rights to the screenplay is because money was running short and her books had stopped selling. However she so disliked the Oscar-winning Disney production that she never allowed any more of her books to be adapted into films; she passed away in 1996.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Reviews:
Scott Foundas of Variety lauded the film, writing that the film “has all the makings of an irresistible backstage tale, and it’s been brought to the screen with a surplus of old-fashioned Disney showmanship…”, highlighting that Tom Hanks‘ portrayal captured Walt Disney’s “folksy charisma and canny powers of persuasion — at once father, confessor and the shrewdest of businessmen.” Overall, he praised the film as “very rich in its sense of creative people and their spirit of self-reinvention.”
David Gritten of The Daily Telegraph noted that the confrontational interaction between Emma Thompson and Hanks as “terrific”, singling out Thompson’s “bravura performance”, and calling the film itself as overall “smart, witty entertainment”.
IndieWire’s Ashley Clark felt similarly, stating that the film “is witty, well-crafted and well-performed mainstream entertainment…”
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