"Saving Mr. Banks" is a contemplative and moving film for adult children -- not the little ones -- who have discovered that life is difficult, and who fear that joy, beauty, and fun may be lost to them forever. But it also reflects a glint of hope in the moistly emotional theatrical darkness.
The film harkens back to Disney’s live-action family movies of the late 1960s, while it fools us into believing that we are enjoying a very light and silly, feel-good, very 21st century escape into nostalgia for better times. But just like the first time we saw “Mary Poppins,” before we know it, we find ourselves mystically pondering our own lives and the things that matter most.
We are led on a journey into the long ago childhood of a woman who attempted to bury her painful memories in whimsical fantasy. As stuffy and prim as Emma Thompson makes P.L. Travers appear in her 1960s garb, if you squint a little, you can just make out — beneath her adamant, fussy silence and polished façade — the inscrutable determination of a hipster or a goth.
By risking what might have been an embarrassing foray into cliché and overstatement, director John Lee Hancock has captured the depressive Zeitgeist. He juxtaposes Walt Disney’s whimsical style and heightened color and the hyper-cheerful songs of the Sherman Brothers that lifted our sodden spirits long ago, with a dark and onerous narrative of Mrs.Travers’ stolen childhood. The waves of story-telling gradually meld her memories with our own.
“Saving Mr. Banks” frees viewers to welcome both the tears and the elation that nostalgia brings. Our pain and shame over past errors, and our fears of others’ judgement that we keep tucked in a pocket may come tumbling out along with the Kleenex. But after this movie, we will be more likely to simply leave them where they fall.
