THE ONLY MP THAT CAN PUT THINGS RIGHT - MARY POPPINS.....

Last year I took Tom to California and started a two week trip touring West coast America, which took in LA, San Fran, Yosemite, Death Valley, Vegas, Canyon, Joshua Tree National Park, while everyone was celebrating the Olympics. I'm still unsure if I did the right thing as everyone said London was a city changed for two weeks, but then everyone in California is always that happy clappy.  I thought it was a phenomenal trip and so did Tom and hey, we hope to return next year where we can stay a little longer and learn to surf.

Visit California, the PR agency for the State had organised an event prior to World Travel Market, which is held in Excel each year and is the world under one roof and feels like it.   We were to watch a screening of the film SAVING MR BANKS, (set in California hence the link) a month earlier than everyone else.

Featuring Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson, the film tells the story of how PL Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins books, was brought onto screen by Walt Disney.   I think it's a 'fictionalized story' as from what I understand the author wasn't happy with the film (the cartoon penguins in particular) but it doesn't come across that way in this film - the ending is wonderfully ambiguous.   It's an interesting story, beautifully acted by the main protagonists as well as the surrounding actors who are outstanding and hold the screen as much as Hanks and Thompson.  Stay till the end credits because you hear the funny and extremely poignant real life tapes recorded in the meetings between the PL Travers and the producers of Mary Poppins going over the script line by line.  It must have been painful for all of them.

I guarantee you will laugh and cry, especially if you have 'unresolved' business with your father.    In a way it's like the film Atonement in that it's about an author wanting to right wrongs in her book.  She puts herself and her family into the story, and thereby her heart and soul.  Thank goodness it lacks the searing judgement of Atonement, which was blisteringly sad and ultimately depressing because there was no atonement.  Writing another story, another ending, doesn't alter the truth of what happens in real life.  It may put life choices into perspective but it doesn't change those choices, just hopefully helps us  (and others) to learn and live with them.

Mr Banks in the film is saved by Mary Poppins.   In real life, her father wasn't saved, least of all by himself.  But P L Travers saved the 'memory' of him as someone who was good and kind with a good heart and shouldn't be misjudged.   Like Disney, her father was a dreamer, who created wonderful worlds, but couldn't deliver them like Disney could.   Few can.     The theme of the film is we all want a Mary Poppins in our life, someone who will fly down and sort things out for us when things are in chaos and the wind is blowing in the wrong direction.   We forget, in real life we are our own Mary Poppins.  Or we should be.