REVIEW : "Saving Mr. Banks" (2013) - Movie by John Lee Hancock

Sometimes a movie really takes me by surprise. When that happens it is always, or almost always, because of the story. One of the aspects I don't like in a film is when it sort of forces itself upon me and presses too hard to make the point it wants to make. I guess it works at times, but usually it just takes those little emotional hints and details out of the experience that mostly is what makes the difference.

Saving Mr. Banks, on the surface, looks like an ordinary, run of the mill kind of small drama, and maybe to some extend it is. But what it does so surprisingly well is to establish characters, very quickly, that are both likeable and somewhat unlikeable (in a likeable way) and lets us get deep under their skin. This is not that easy to do and make you feel the same feelings they have but it works beautifully here.

Walt Disney (Hanks) has tried for almost 20 years to get P. L. Travers (Thompson) to sell the rights to her famous bedtime story Mary Poppins. He has not succeeded and this is not least because of extreme differences in ideals of artistic quality. Travers will not let Walt Disney-fy her beloved and very personal story.

And the personal aspects of her story and her characters are what drives this movie forward. Disney is sidetracked to a supporting role in the face of the emotional journey Mrs. Travers is going to go through when she on grounds of her economy eventually agrees to go to the Disney headquarters to "supervise" a try at developing Poppins for the big screen.

From the first word Travers utters it is pretty clear that she is a woman who is used to get things her way. At the same time we also get an idea that her behaviour may have something to do with things that happened a long time ago in her childhood and has something to do with her father.

The people at Disney, including Walt, do everything they can to please her and try to fit her at times weird ideas into what could possibly be an adaptation of something looking like a Disney production. But it is an uphill battle and more than a few times it seems that Travers is against everything just for being against everything.

As we get to know her backstory better, the reason for her behaviour and her relation to the story starts to unfold and take shape. In fact, it is close to becoming the back story that takes steals the show rather than the somewhat simplistic Disney "environment" she is in.

We do get a bit of cultural clash between the colourful Disney fantasy and the more stiff upper lip English form that is Poppins. And Travers leaves no doubt about where she stands on the "quality" of Disney´s "animation" and maybe slightly sentimental style.

Halfway through the second act, when Travers hostility is dangerously close to becoming repetitive, the movie takes on a more serious and deeper expression. She starts to realise, slowly but surely, that maybe facing what she needs to face is what she needs to do to get on with her life. Her own childhood "traumas" and Mary Poppins go so closely in hand, that if she keeps it locked up for ever - she herself will lock up emotionally, forever.

And maybe letting Disney, under her helm, adapt the thing into a movie is the katharsis that she needs. Her backstory, which is a very moving and joyful relation to her father, a rare case in movies when a relation between a parent and a child is expressed as positive (and not least by a father), and serves as an expression of how she finally comes through to the other end.

I love almost everything about this movie. And that is saying a lot for something I thought would be some kind of average, mainstream sentimentalist drama. It has its share of sentimentality but it is measured correctly and dosed out at the exactly right moments. The moments when you need that sentimentality to identify with Travers emotional state.

It does not use any kind of fancy cinematography or any outlandish scenery to impress me or force emotions on me. It just does the tried and tested ways of telling a coherent and interesting story that anyone (possibly) can identify with. It is a bit of a relief that these kinds of well told, unpretentious movie-stories can still appear.

The most important aspect of this movies success though, is its ability to connect flashbacks with the "present day" story (1960´s). There are many discrete little transitional elements that echo between the timeframes and it makes it a joy to switch back and forth between them, rather than becoming a necessary explanatory tool, in order to make anything in the Disney setting work. This is an aspect I don't think I have seen so well executed before and I must sincerely recommend this movie for fitting these parts so well together, so that both timeframes work on an individual emotional level and also together in a cohesive story. Bravo.

This one gets my highest recommendations for a practically flawless gem of a delightfully watchable drama that will grab your feeling and never let you go until the end. it is a brilliantly told story about coming to terms with your past and not letting it steer your present and keep you tied up in an emotional knot. The actor performances are generally very good, in their mostly undertoned style, specifically Emma Thompson. She really shines in this role and it feels like she was pretty much born for it. Even a small chauffeur role for Giamatti is nicely incorporated.

10/10