By Steven Witkin ’16

Many people know the story of Mary Poppins, the magical nanny who saves a family through life lessons, but there is a more emotional and somber story behind her creation. “Saving Mr. Banks”, directed by John Lee Hancock, reveals the story behind the story, the fascinatingly real experiences of Mary Poppins’ creator, P.L. Travers, which fueled the fictional nanny’s creation, and how they made problematic Disney’s attempts to turn it into a film. Although there are some flaws in the movie, they rarely detract from the intriguing tale.

P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) had been pestered by Disney for 20 years by the time she agreed to come and collaborate on a script for her popular book, “Mary Poppins”. The movie portrays the aging author as an old British curmudgeon with an inexplicable hatred for pears stuck in a hot and modern Hollywood. She is further characterized by her resolute demands for the movie to not include any animations, music of any kind, or the color red. This sometimes-humorous portrayal is quite accurate because the entire process between Disney and Travers in the 1960s was audio recorded at the request of the author. The quoting of actual conversations between the real-life characters, as well as the inclusion of real film clips and drawings, makes the movie feel accurate and realistic.

What the movie excels at is connecting every part of P.L Travers’ troubled childhood in Australia to its influences on the story and the cause for Travers’ stubbornness. The movie switches several times from Travers’ childhood in turn-of-the-century Australia to Disney’s studios in the 1960’s, connecting nearly every request, action or sentiment of Travers to an event that actually happened in her childhood involving her inept father, distraught mother and nanny-like aunt. The flashbacks mirror the story of Mary Poppins, giving insight into why the story is so special to Travers, and why she was so reluctant to put it in someone else’s hands.

Although the connection made between childhood and story is a fascinating one, it can be confusing. The movie starts out in Australia, and never connects that the little girl called “Ginty” is actually the author of “Mary Poppins” until it becomes clear halfway into the movie. Unless the viewer had read a summary of the movie, the constant flashbacks could be mysterious. The constant back and forth between time periods, sometimes as often as every five minutes, has a nullifying effect on the movie as Disney’s happy songs get cut by a sad recollection. In this way, neither emotion gets fully developed, washing away some of the good comedy, making the movie seem more like an informational Discovery Channel reenactment than a blockbuster movie.

Although there are some puzzling parts and half-baked emotions, “Saving Mr. Banks” gives viewers a realistic insight into one of the most popular Disney movies of its era, and how its songs came to be. Though it can be looked at as a mere dramatization, it’s an entertaining movie that you don’t have to be a Disney fan to enjoy.