The best movie of 2013

Rating: 10/10 (26 December 2013)

I saw this film twice the week it came out. It is magical and glorious. It made me feel so good I had to see it again to figure out why.
"12 Years A Slave" and "Philomena" are incredibly wonderful films which I regard as must-sees, but "Saving Mr. Banks" hit me in a way that I almost think was religious. The impact of the film is encapsulated in an amazing scene near the end of the film in which Walt Disney tells Pamela Travers why Mary Poppins is so important to him. I don't want to say more or it would be a spoiler, but watch for that scene and don't get up to go to the toilet then!! It is so beautiful.
There is a great deal of humor in the film, much of it due to Pamela Travers' eccentricities, but we see very serious flashbacks throughout the film which help us to understand why the Mary Poppins stories were so important to Travers. Colin Farrell does an Oscar-worthy job of portraying the father in those flashbacks.
Yes, they changed the true story a bit to make this movie. Apparently Disney and Travers never went to Disneyland together and certain other details were changed. But a lot of it is very real, and they used tapes of meetings between Travers and the Disney folks to recreate some key conversations. At the end of the movie, as the credits roll, they actually play one of those real tapes, so you can see that what you just saw was not unlike the reality of those meetings. I have read a great deal about the making of this film and P.L. Travers and I am impressed with the trouble they went to to make this film. Travers was far too complex to portray her thoroughly in this film, and I forgive the filmmakers for changing certain details. The end result here is far more beautiful than a straight, 100% true bio-pic would be.
Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Paul Giamatti, Jason Schwartzman, B.J. Novak, Colin Farrell, Ruth Wilson and little Annie Rose Buckley did wonderful jobs portraying their characters. You will want to see this film over and over again.