In Saving Mr. Banks, Tom Hanks stars as Walt Disney and Emma Thomson as P.L. Travers, the author of the Marry Poppins children’s book which was originally published in 1934. The basic story is that in the early 1960s Disney wanted to do, well, the Disney thing with the book and turn it into a live action film featuring nonsensical songs the masses would involuntarily hum as they left the theaters. Travers, on the other hand, held the intellectual property rights meaning everything had to first go through her before the movie could happen, and she was most certainly not a mouse ears-wearing member of the Mickey Mouse Club. Disney was ever so Disney about it (“But Pamela, think about the children”), and Travers was ever so British about it (“Oh, poppycock, and don’t you dare ever again begin a sentence with a conjunction around me! Plus, what have I told you about referring to me by my first name. You know full well you are to call me Ms. Travers or Ms. or nothing at all”).
If you have yet to see the movie, just watch the trailer and imagine a couple more flashbacks with Colin Farrell as Travers’ father in Australia and you’ve pretty much seen the movie, right down to the final scene between Disney and Travers when the former finally wears down the latter.
The film is of sufficient merit to have received generally favorable critical reviews (81% fresh rating on RottenTomatoes), even if noted critic David Edelstein recently listed it as one of the worst films of 2013. It has a tentative seat at the table among awards contenders, although perhaps only a contender for an acting nomination or two (the Golden Globes gave it one nomination: Best Actress for Emma Thompson). At the box office, it opened a bit softer than expected before surging nearly 50% over Christmas. It now has a total domestic/worldwide gross of $40 million/$45 million, which is but a drop in the wide ocean that is Disney’s financial empire but still not bad after two weeks of wide release for a film which cost $35 million to make. Audiences (at least opening night audiences) appear to like it, grading it as an A on CinemaScore’s A-F scale.
Walt Disney on left, Tom Hanks as Walt Disney on right. Hanks is the first person to play Walt Disney on film.
So, where’s the problem? Well, for some – like David Edelstein – the spoonful of sentimental sugar that is the film’s surface simply distracts from the harder-to-swallow medicine of clear Disney propaganda. This is, after all, a Disney produced film about the making of a classic Disney film-Marry Poppins-which, not coincidentally, is reaching its 50th anniversary just in time for an anniversary Blu-Ray release to be pushed during the holidays. Of course-the argument goes-the story told will present P.L. Travers as the villain of the piece to Walt Disney’s ever avuncular hero. It is not in Disney’s best corporate interests to tell a story which makes them look bad. Plus, the audience comes to the film presumably with an awareness and possibly affinity for Marry Poppins, which BBC film critic Mark Kermode as repeatedly praised as being a perfect film. Saving Mr. Banks is not the story of how that amazing film got made, but instead of the mean British woman who almost stopped it from happening but had her cold heart at least partially thawed by the unique charms of Walt Disney and the Disney machine.
This line of criticism is neither unexpected nor is it completely invalid. However, it might sell Saving Mr. Banks a bit short. There are certain factual realities of Walt Disney the person as well as long-standing criticisms of the Disney corporation that do not go unacknowledged.
- Fact: Walt Disney was a chain smoker for the entirety of his adult life, ultimately dying in 1965 from lung cancer-related complications.
- Saving Mr. Banks: Upon learning of the intention to use a cartoon sequence in Mary Poppins, Travers bursts into Disney’s office, catching him off-guard. He has a cigarette in his hand, which he quickly extinguishes in an ashtray while explaining how he never lets anyone see him smoking (especially children) for fear of encouraging emulation of his admittedly nasty habit. We never see him actually smoke, and the film takes place before Disney had been diagnosed with lung cancer.
- Fact: Walt Disney actually lost the rights to one of his earliest creations, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, to producer Charlie Mintz who hired away most of Disney’s staff. It was this lesson that taught Disney in 1928 the importance of intellectual property rights as well as necessitated the creation of a replacement character, which is why Mickey Mouse was created.
- Saving Mr. Banks: Disney has a late-night conversation with Mary Poppins‘ music composer Richard Sherman (Jason Schwartzman) in which he expresses a degree of empathy for Travers’ position, explaining how he had been on the other side of this and it would have absolutely killed him had he ever lost the rights to Mickey Mouse.
- Fact: Walt Disney got pretty much everything he wanted with Marry Poppins while most of Travers’ recommendations were ultimately ignored.
- Saving Mr. Banks:Travers objects to the design of the Banks’ house, the mere suggestion of casting of Dick Van Dyke, the usage of the color red, and depicting Mr. Banks as having a moustache, the latter because that’s how he was drawn in the pictures which her publisher provided with her novels but she never approved and wished to rectify that now. However, Disney eventually comes to understand how much Mary Poppins was born out of personal tragedy involving Travers’ alcoholic father, consoling her over this and arguing for the therapeutic process that will be her finally letting go. Once Travers finally signs away the film rights, we cut to the Mary Poppins premiere where we quickly see indications that every single suggestion made by Travers has gone ignored – there’s Van Dyke on the poster with the color red prominently displayed and Mr. Banks depicted with a moustache. Travers is shown to be resigned but nonetheless dismayed when she observes all of these aspects in the movie’s poster. There are actually multiple other requests Travers made which went ignored by Disney but are not mentioned in Saving Mr. Banks.
- Fact: P.L. Travers was not originally invited to the Los Angeles premiere of Mary Poppins, but managed to eventually guilt Disney into inviting her. At the actual premiere, she surprisingly wept. She would later claim to it being a combination at the surprise of seeing the name Mary Poppins on the screen as well as the horror at seeing what Disney had done to her characters. At the after-party, she tracked Disney down and loudly proclaimed the first thing to go would have to be the dancing cartoon penguin sequence. Disney responded, “Pamela, the ship has sailed.” Travers had final script approval, but Disney had the final cut approval, meaning his-not her-word was truly final. Travers was so incensed in reaction to this perceived mistreatment she refused the future efforts of the Disney Corporation to adapt any more of her Mary Poppins novels into sequel films. Travers would again echo her anti-Disney sentiment when attempting to adapt her novel into a stage musical with famed producer Cameron Mackintosh.
- Saving Mr. Banks: Travers simply shows up in Los Angeles to guilt an annoyed Disney into inviting her. At the premiere, she openly weeps throughout Mary Poppins, overcome with emotion as remembrances of her father in relation to scenes in the film come flooding back to her. At one point, Disney attempts to console her, promising her that Mr. Banks will be okay, a suggestion she fights off by merely claiming she is crying over hating the cartoon penguins. Disney is shown to be annoyed with never quite pleasing her, but the implication is that she is putting up a front and is instead finally reaching some closure over the death of her father. There is no hint of further acrimony between the two parties nor does she make any suggestion about altering the film in any way.
- Criticism: The theme park is a shallow commercial venture.
- Saving Mr. Banks: Disney attempts to sway Travers to his charms by escorting her to a morning at his theme park, but Travers mostly wants nothing to do with it, abhorring every aspect of the park until an automated horse carousel proves moderately enjoyable before triggering a sad flashback involving Travers’ alcoholic father. Later on, Disney explains the significance of one of the windows in his theme park as being a reminder of his rough life as a child laborer with a difficult father while growing up in Missouri.
- Criticism: That “Disney’s film style both patronizes and idealizes childhood while never treating seriously the difficulties of life.”
- Saving Mr. Banks: Travers pretty much states this criticism word for word, but the film’s conclusion argues for a supremacy of the Disney approach as evidenced by Travers’ reaching emotional catharsis and crying at the premiere of Mary Poppins.
Thompson on the left, Travers on the right.
One could argue that this all paints a more interesting story than Saving Mr. Banks is actually willing to tell. However, if one should so desire a more even-handed approach to the story there are multiple documentaries on the subject (The Real Mary Poppins, The Shadow Of Mary Poppins) as well as an extensive biography (Mary Poppins She Wrote).
Does any of this actually make Saving Mr. Banks a bad movie? No. There is always going to be issues of dramatic license with stories based upon actual events, and as articulately argued by FilmSchoolRejects there is something even more discomforting than normal here:
Saving Mr. Banks seeks to speak on behalf of two subjects: the assumed creative genius (Disney) and the person who signed off her intellectual property to the assumed creative genius (Travers). In doing so, Disney no longer simply owns the adaptation, but seeks to own the process and terms of that adaptation.
In other word, in life Disney screwed Travers over (even if she profited from it financially), and now in death he has done so again. However, the arguments Saving Mr. Banks makes about Travers’ personal tragedy which led to the creation of Mary Poppins to begin with is by most accounts factually accurate and powerful dramatic material. Saving Mr. Banks is at times too schmaltzy, but it is a perfectly fine film, thinly drawn at first before it reveals more about the principal players – Travers and Disney – and cleverly utilizes an entirely fictional limousine driver (Paul Giamatti) as a way of making Travers more sympathetic.
However, such historical adaptations are rarely ever so nakedly self-serving – a Disney film about a Disney story. That formula is far too nauseating for some to bare, as is the way Saving Mr. Banks acknowledges unsympathetic facts and criticisms before spinning them into Disney-friendly positives. Vaguely similar criticisms were made earlier this year of The Internship, e.g., it’s just a giant commercial for Google. However, The Internship isn’t a bad movie because of its Google connections but instead because it’s simply not that funny. Is it possible to judge Saving Mr. Banks on its own merits as a movie?
FilmSchoolRejects concluded their reaction to Saving Mr. Banks thusly:
Over the end credits of Saving Mr. Banks, a tape plays uninterrupted that depicts real audio of Travers’ recorded script negotiations. It’s an enticing gesture of transparency, a symbolic opening of the tightly regulated Disney vaults. Yet this, like the cigarette moment, encapsulates something essential about Saving Mr. Banks‘ careful tango with history: it’s a friendly nod at open dialogue and self-evaluation, but one that’s only interested in a conversation in which the terms have already been set.
They’re not wrong. However, does that mean you can’t enjoy Saving Mr. Banks? And are we really that surprised that the spin goes Disney’s way instead of Travers;?
What do you think? Just because a film project has a corporate agenda inherently weakens its merits? Has no effect? Let us know what you think in the comments section.
