This week we take a short hop back to 2013 with Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson as we watch the biographical story of P.L. Travers;
Saving Mr. Banks
You really cannot go wrong with a Tom Hanks film, but team him up with the sublimely talented and wonderful Emma Thompson and you have a sure fire hit on your hands.
Saving Mr Banks is a biographical account how how author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) is cinematographically seduced, for want of a better phrase by the inimitable Walt Disney (Hanks). P.L. Travers wrote the children's story; Mary Poppins and Walt wants to bring the story, that he read to his children, to the big screen. However, he hadn't bargained on the voracious and tenacious Mrs Travers, who holds this very personal story very close to her heart, the characters after all are family to her.
The film juxtaposes a childhood thread of Helen Goff (before she became P.L Travers), set in Australia in the early twentieth century, against the 1960's version where she is being coerced by Mr Disney to allow him to portray her dearest of characters on film. The viewer drifts between the 1900's and the 1960's, as the intertwined story unfolds. On the one hand you have the young Helen growing up with her loving, but heavy drinking father, set against the Disney studio team trying to develop the story with music and animation, both of which Mrs Travers cannot abide. And it is this to and throwing, that provides a multi-layering of story as we see the organic growth of the film; Mary Poppins, set against the sometime tragic and sometime happy moments of the young Helen Goff growing up. It is these moments, these fleeting glimpses in history, that has provided the basis for the original Mary Poppins book and now the movie version too.
That organic growth is very evident when the musical talents of Robert and Richard Sherman (B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman respectively) work through the songs for the film and it is quite delightful and amusing to see a dramatisation of how they could have possibly developed. Set this against that powerful, strict and stiff upper lipped force that is P.L. Travers and you have yourself a keen Anglo-American battle, which is just fun to watch.
Emma Thompson is quite simply superb as Mrs Travers, ideally suited for the role and practically perfect in every way, to coin a phrase stolen from some film! Also, and yet again, Tom Hanks is on the money as the king of the Magic Kingdom. His mannerisms and perfect Missourian drawl of Walt Disney is just brilliant and they are both a joy to watch.
Whilst on the subject of the cast, there is one character that may get over looked, but we believe he plays a pivotal role in the film; Paul Giamatti plays Ralph the driver supplied by Disney to ferry Mrs, as he calls her, around and they strike up an unlikely but palpable friendship which adds so much to story. At first their relationship is quirky and provides a modicum of levity to the story line, but as it develops Ralph becomes a real friend to Mrs Travers.
In summation, the two stories mingled together is such a beautiful way to run this story line out, hopping back and forward those sixty or so years from childhood beginnings of the saga, to it playing out in the transformation of the characters to film, it's touching, emotional, heartfelt and charming, with a little bit of whimsy thrown in for good measure. The cast are marvelous, the soundtrack familiar and yet touching. The stunning Australian scenery, played out against the Hollywood backdrop is all so easy on the eye and wonderfully shot.
In short a really lovely, pink and fluffy film. Which should score quite highly from the massed panel here at TNiFN Towers.
TNiFN Rating 89%
IMDB Link
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