Saving Mr. Banks

Saving Mr. Banks is a lovely film. A jolly holiday, you might say. If you haven't heard the buzz on this film, it concerns the back story of how Walt Disney took years (well, decades actually) to convince P.L. Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins books to let Disney have the rights to make the Mary Poppins film.

Tom Hanks looks like he is having a wonderful time portraying the larger than life Walt Disney. Emma Thompson seems to be channeling every old crusty aunt she ever encountered as a child to bring the difficult and very odd authoress to the screen. Again, she appears to be having a ball.

Colin Farrell plays the lovable but unreliable father of Mrs. Travers in the flashback scenes of her childhood in Australia. Apparently after her father died, young Helen Lyndon Goff reinvented herself as Pamela Lyndon Travers and traveled to England to write after a failed stage career in Australia. The Disney version of the story is quite whitewashed, although you might not think so while watching the film. Travers was apparently a bisexual single mother who adopted only one of a set of twins after consulting with an astrologer about which boy to choose.

And if you think Emma Thompson is portraying Travers in a harsh light, stay behind in the theatre for the end of the credits, where they play some of the audio tapes of the meetings between the author and the film makers. She was a real piece of work!

Thankfully, the Mary Poppins film that we know and love so well was made by Walt Disney as it is perfection in my estimation. Well, perhaps it is a tad too long, which is also the case with Saving Mr. Banks but they are equally wonderful. You will enjoy this film, especially if like me, you have a soft spot for Mary Poppins and the Banks family.

Cheers and Happy New Year!

P.S. I adore the way the title of the film is gradually revealed as the story unfolds. She certainly isn't there to save the children!

Saving Mr. Banks and other must see films!

There are a few films on my list to see (hopefully over the holidays) which I will blog about later, but I thought I would let you know what looks good so you can see them before I do!

You have likely seen some of the promos for Saving Mr. Banks with Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks. If you are a sentimental fool like I am, you will be counting the days until you see the story of how Walt Disney convinced P.L. Travers to let him bring Mary Poppins to the silver screen. I love the title, which refers to how the book Mary Poppins is about rescuing Mr. Banks (and Mrs. Banks for that matter) not the children. I have loved the Disney film from when I was young and my eldest child (now 22 years old) used to pretend he was a chimney sweep and dance around the house when he was 2 or 3. I think I may take him to see this one!

I am looking forward to seeing Philomena just as much as Saving Mr. Banks. Apparently Judi Dench and Steve Coogan are both at their level best in this dramedy about an elderly Irish woman who goes to America with the help of a journalist to look for the boy she unwillingly "gave up for adoption" after a stay at a 1950s Catholic home for fallen women. Apparently it is Stephen Frears' best film since The Queen.

I can't wait.

Although I am not a huge Ralph Fiennes fan, I have a lot of respect for his acting and that he is such a fan of Charles Dickens that he wanted to bring The Invisible Woman, the story of Dickens' mistress Nelly Ternan to the screen. The fact that the middle aged Dickens abandoned his wife and 10 children for an 18 year old actress...well that much is history and we might as well have a great film out of it. Felicity Jones plays the titular role (I have loved her since Northanger Abbey) and a few names like Tom Hollander and Kristin Scott Thomas sound good too!

Well, a few others are on my list such as August: Osage County, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, The Book Thief and American Hustle.

And don't forget that Season 4 of Downton Abbey starts Sunday January 5th! PBS is having a draw for a trip to England to mark the event!

Suffragettes in film- "Deeds, not Words!"

When I decided to write a post on suffragettes in film, I thought there would be more material on which to draw. There are surprisingly few films (or television programs) which have dealt even peripherally with Women's Suffrage.

I have to give Walt Disney some credit for making the story of the suffragettes so key to Mary Poppins, however the underlying message was really that Mrs. Banks should have been at home, paying more attention to her kids rather than getting "Votes for Women". We'll let that pass as they also skewered Mr. Banks being emotionally absent to the children. That was about as equal as you got in 1964 I suppose.

And truly, I think this is the only exposure to the story of the suffragettes that many citizens of the world have ever had!

We'll have to see whether the issue comes up in the new film Saving Mr. Banks starring Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson as P.L. Travers (the author of Mary Poppins). Apparently Disney only put the suffragette story in to explain why Mrs. Banks would have needed a nanny. The majority of the American audience didn't know what a nanny was at the time the film was released.

Apparently the best film about Women's Suffrage is Iron Jawed Angels which was made as an HBO film in 2004. Starring Hilary Swank, Frances O'Connor, Angelica Huston, Vera Farmiga and Julia Ormond it even has Patrick Dempsey as a love interest. How did I never hear about this before???

I have requested this for Mother's Day (OK, who am I kidding? I ordered it myself from Amazon and tossed it to my husband today to be wrapped for Sunday). So I will review it when I have seen it. Stay tuned but it sounds amazing.

Just a brief history lesson here. The women's suffrage movement was active mainly in England, America and the colonies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The purple white and green stood for dignity, purity and hope respectively. It is a popular myth that the colours were green white and violet for "Give Women Votes".

Posters like this one were a common sight in England and the USA. Emmeline Pankhurst coined the phrase "Deeds, not Words" as the male politicians kept telling women to be patient and that the topic would be debated...sometime soon! Women demonstrated in the streets and were often arrested and force fed if they went on hunger strikes. If thrown in gaol, they considered themselves political prisoners.

Valentine Wannop (Adelaide Clemens) from Parade's End gave a little demonstration on a golf course (with her friend Gertie) whose escape was aided by Christopher Tietjens played by Benedict Cumberbatch.

I was thrilled to see that Mr. Selfridge included the suffragettes right from the first episode, making it clear that Harry Selfridge's fictitious female financial backer Lady Mae Loxley was also a quiet funder of the women's suffrage movement and held her meetings at the restaurant in Selfridge's.

Edwardian suffragette pendant 

Of course you just know that the real Harry Selfridge would have been marketing all kinds of merchandise to the suffragettes at the time. Indeed he would likely have wanted women to wield more power in England so they could have more influence over how the money was spent. Shrewd man that little Jeremy Piven!

On a more serious note, New Zealand was the first country to grant women full voting rights in 1893 and Switzerland was the last western country to do so in 1971! And just so you know, there are still places in the world where women still cannot vote such as Saudi Arabia and The Vatican. So please vote in every election you are able to. Our ancestors (who were denied the right) won it for us, ladies!

Let me end with a link to a YouTube music video that you may want to show your daughters, granddaughters, sisters and girlfriends. It won an Emmy and you will have Lady Gaga stuck in your head for days!

YouTube Bad Romance: Women's Suffrage