As a way of illustrating the difference between fiction and non-fiction, Northrup Frye once wrote that
“we don’t go to see Macbeth to learn
about the history of Scotland…we go to learn what a man feels like after he’s
gained a kingdom and lost his soul.” In other words, non-fiction tells what happened. Fiction tells us what happens. We don't see Macbeth to find out what happened in Scotland. We go to see what happens when Macbeth gains a kingdom and loses his soul.
I rarely go to a movie to find out what happened. I forget that I'm evidently in the minority when I do this. I've come to learn that many viewers have gone to the movie Saving Mr. Banks to see what happened during the time that Walt Disney acquired the rights to Mary Poppins and are critical of the movie because it idealizes the history of this story.
Seeing this movie as non-fiction, or as history never crossed my mind. In fact, it wasn't until after I saw the movie that I found out that people were making negative remarks about its lack of historical accuracy.
From the first moment Emma Thompson's character, P. L. Travers, appeared on the screen, I experienced her as spiritually dead, or at least numb. The character P. L. Travers is portrayed as vain, unkind, arrogant, inflexible, and haughty in her professional dealings and isolated, lonely, and miserably friendless in her private life.
Almost immediately, I began to hope this movie was going to be a classic comedy. By this, I don't mean a movie filled with gags and laugh out loud punchlines and goofiness, but a movie that does what stories in the classical sense of comedy do: move from spiritual (or emotional) death to life, move from isolation to being a part of the social fabric, move from numbness to feeling, from misery to joy. Traditionally, comedy is a way of telling stories that explores what gives life its vitality, of what, in life, is life-giving, as opposed to life-denying.
Seen this way, Saving Mr. Banks was a terrific comedy.
I didn't know anything about Saving Mr. Banks before I saw the movie (although Christy has let slip the fact that Tom Hanks plays Walt Disney -- no problem). But as the movie unfolded, I realized I had not come to this movie to learn the history of Disney, but to learn what it feels like when this woman, P. L. Travers, has lost the vitality of her soul and experiences her soul's vitality coming to life again.
In case you haven't seen the movie, I won't tell what happens in it nor will I say what I think helps P. L. Travers come alive. I'll save these comments for another day after the movie has been out for a while.
I will say, though, that I was very happy that I came into this movie ignorant of what it was about and so I was receptive to its core story. I didn't have a litmus test in mind for its historical accuracy (after all, it is fiction) nor did I have any other kind of test in mind. I enjoyed the slow awakening of P. L. Travers, free of any expectations of what this movie was said to be about.
My experience with this movie connects directly to an ongoing and wonderful, life-giving private Facebook group I belong to.
This group is small and we all went to a private liberal arts college and both colleges, Whitworth and Pacific Lutheran University, are church related.
Our group loves sharing poetry and books and TED talks and movies with each other and one thread that pops up from time to time involves movies under a genre I used to call Dead Man Comes to Life. I wanted to include movies about women in this genre, but all the movies that originally popped into mind were about men: A Christmas Carol, The Visitor, Snow Cake, Lost in Translation, Rails and Ties, The Pawnbroker, The Band's Visit among others.
One of our group's members, Diane, knew that I wanted to know about movies featuring Dead Women Coming to Life as well, and she helped me out by listing movies featuring women whose once dead/numb spirits came to life, and so now our group refers to this genre as Dead Coming to Life. Here are movies about women, men, and women and men that our group listed as stories about the Dead Coming to Life. We really had a great improvisational theater time compiling this list. It is 100% a "Yes, and" list:
Enchanted April
Tea with Mussolini
Sex, Lies, and Videotape
A Prayer for the Dying
A Late Quartet
Quartet
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont
Mona Lisa Smile
Finding Forester
Local Hero
Tender Mercies
Get Low
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Last Orders
It's a Wonderful Life
The Bishop's Wife
Marvin's Room
The Accidental Tourist
Cold Comfort Farm
This list added significantly to movies that I must see.
I am very happy to add Saving Mr. Banks to it.
If you see it, give this a try: don't expect the movie to tell you what happened at Disney studios. It's not non-fiction. Enjoy what happens to P. L. Travers. There you will find enduring truth, the kind that fiction is the best source of.
(Oh! If eternal life exists, I hope there will be a movie theater featuring an endless movie featuring Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks.)
2 comments:
I'm glad I didn't know a lot about the movie, either. And it surprised me when you talked how people criticized the movie because of the historical inaccuracy...who cares? I'm with you. This wasn't a story about what happened at the Disney Studios...it was a story of what happened to the people in the movie...and that is much more interesting. My favorite movies are ones that move me to laughter, tears and surprise me....this did not disappoint.
Thank you so much for this marvelous blog post, which I eagerly anticipated! I, too, am absolutely entranced by the Dead Coming To Life, as I mentioned in our long string. Your thoughts always intrigue me, and always provoke my own.
P.L. Travers has long been a favorite author of mine (I've read articles that she has written for the journal "Parabola" and I had been entranced by a wonderful and long interview with her that had been included in one of my favorite books "Pipers at the Gates of Dawn"). So, I had some trepidation what might be shown, since I had seen the previews. The previews seemed to indicate that Disney was wonderful and P.L. Travers not, although that was not what I felt from watching the film in total.
I had exactly the same reaction to the film as you did. It was uplifting, and certainly a classic comedy. I look forward to seeing it again. Other than the Dead Coming to Life theme, I also was fascinated by the story about an author letting her characters and the places the characters inhabit be imagined physically by someone else, and differently than she imagined. I've never really thought about how the authors have felt to have their works translated by another.
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