Screened Out – Saving Mr. Banks

[five-star-rating]Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Paul Giamatti, Colin Farrell, Bradley Whitford, B.J. Novak, Jason Schwartzman[/five-star-rating]

It was the momentous meeting of two magical personalities Walt Disney and Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers. He’d already changed the face of family entertainment forever, and he wanted to add her beloved children’s book to his pantheon of movie successes. He’d courted her for 18 years; she always said no. Then they met in 1961, and she said yes.

It took a fortnight of convincing, but she gave permission, and Disney made one of the most revered family films of all times, a winner of five Academy Awards.

It turns out that there was so much more going on behind the scenes. In the mid-1990s, it was revealed that Travers had all her sessions with Disney and his creative team taped. These historic recordings detailed her nitpicking of the script, her poring over of the design elements, and her harsh critique of the Sherman Brothers now famous songs.

Emotional, funny, and sweet, Saving Mr. Banks focuses on those two mysterious weeks at Disneyland in California, with flashbacks into Travers’ stark upbringing.

Many biographers have dug into both Disney’s and Travers’ lives. Of course, Travers’ life was less explored, partially because she was so thoroughly British, proper, and private. A couple of biographies were released in the 1990s both exploring Travers’ rough Australian childhood, her unmarried adoption of an Irish baby, and her lifelong bisexuality.

This film boasts amazing performances from Hanks as Disney and especially Thompson as the author. Also fun to watch are Giamatti as Travers’ steadfast American chauffeur, Whitford as famous scriptwriter Don DaGradi, and Novak and Schwartzman as the legendary composing Sherman Brothers. Everyone gets moments to shine. Hanks has big scenes and two lovely monologues as the man behind the Mouse. But make no mistake, this is Thompson’s film; she is radiantly prickly and tortured. She’s garnering awards and recognition for this role, and she deserves every accolade she gets.

Maybe it’s no surprise that people who create magic for children worldwide often had horrible, rotten childhoods themselves. Travers’ own life was an exercise in outback bleakness, with a wildly creative but self-destructive father (the amazing Colin Farrell). Perhaps audiences will well understand how rotten everything was before the movie is done showing us, but Farrell makes each painful memory worth watching.

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This Disney film otherwise has a nifty pace and style, always ably focusing on character. Director Johnny Lee Hancock (The Blind Side) handles the time periods, the art, and the personalities with grace and subtle emotion. The musical score by Thomas Newman (American Beauty, Finding Nemo) marries his beautiful new tunes to the Shermans’ classics. The script is by relative newcomers, Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith. They may overemphasize a point or two, but they also have such a lovely grasp of the larger-than-life characters.

Both Disney and Travers were wildly protective of the magic they made, the creations they birthed. Saving Mr. Banks shows us why, in a most delightful way.