Down memory lane

Rating: Null/10 (31 January 2014)

I wasn't at all sure but had a hunch, and I was right! The movie opened with a few bars of introduction and then the crispy delight of Chim Chimney, the only song that can sound so bouncy and cheerful in a minor key. I knew immediately that I would be entertained with a trip down memory lane. Recounting the story behind the making of "Mary Poppins", "Saving Mr. Banks" liberally sprinkled "in" line such as: "Close your mouth, we are not a codfish". But that is far from what the movie has to offers. For the first time, I was enlightened with the fact that there is quite a true story leading to the legendary movie finally appearing on the silver screen, a story that traversed two decades, as a matter of fact. Nor is this one of your recent proliferation of "inspired by a true story" or "some of these really happened" stock. At the closing credit, the audience is treated to a parade of yellow-brown-faded photographs, replicas of all the real characters in the movie. To top it all, these final credits concluded with a tape recorder playing back what you saw in the movie: word by word recording of the sessions discussing the script as requested, nay, demanded, by author P. L. Travers (Emma Thompson who, for some outrageous, mysterious reasons, was omitted in this year's Oscar nomination).
This movie is actually in three layers of which "Mary Poppins", the movie as well as the book, is one. Those of us who love that movie would be delighted by anecdotes, be they actual or artistically created, on the birth of the many songs that we had been humming in our dreams in more than a half-century. Whether it actually happened that way recounted in the movie (and I have no reason to suspect that it did not), it is fun to note that "down" in "medicine go down" was initially going DOWN in the musical scale which seemed just natural until it dawned on the Sherman Brothers (B. J. Novak, Jason Schwartzman, both excellent) that ending the phrase going UP added so much more zest to the melody.
The second and third layer were narrated in parallel: the central story of the culmination, in L.A., of a 20-year struggle of Walt Disney (Tom Hanks, at his best as usual) to secure the filming right of Travers's popular book and the background story of Helen Goff, as a child nicknamed Ginty (Annie Rose Buckley, another shining child star in the making) living in poverty in Allora, Australia in the early 1990s with her father Travers Goff (Colin Farrell, good and not quite as you have seen before)and the rest of the family. The fact that P. L. Travers used her father's first name as her pen name is as revealing as it can get. Inasmuch as the titular role invariably takes the spotlight, "Mary Poppins" is really about the relationship between a father Mr. Banks and his children. While Ginty carried the guilt (which she should not have) of not being able to save her irresponsible (yet endearing) father, P. L. Travers desperately wanted the workaholic Mr. Banks saved. It was insightful Disney, however, who delivered her and brought her final absolution.
I would be doing a grave injustice if I don't mention Paul Giamatti, in a minor role as Ralph the chauffeur assigned by Disney to Travers. If anyone is truly magical in the movie, it's him. Completely unassuming and apparently totally overwhelmed by Travers's character, Ralph is no fool. When Travers, completely fed up by his repeated mention of the beautiful sunshine (it turned out that there's reason behind it), she lecture him "Rains bring life". Very mildly but with absolute composure, he replied "So does sunshine". At one point towards the end, Travers intimated to Ralph "You are the only American I like". At the end though (without her specifically announcing it) to that list was added a few more, including Disney and her creative team. I don't think she went so far as to like the animated penguins though.
A witty comedy, some poignant moments, not quite Oscar Best Picture material, but a wonderful trip down memory lane and more.