Disney Redemption

"Saving Mr Banks", in the real, hope inspiring Disney tradition, expresses the redeeming as well as resurrecting dimension of rescuing. In Disney Mary Poppins, Mr Banks starts out as a harsh man well acquainted with reality's limitations and is eventually redeemed by letting out his need to dream, thereby equally redeeming all the other bankers. The original inspiration for Mr Banks, PL Travers' father, became her hero for sharing with her a world of imagination and dream, over and against the harshness of reality. He was therefore a hero-looser, becoming, in the Disney version, the self discovered, fulfilled Mr Banks: a mixture of Walt Disney himself and the original dreamer, PL Traver's father. Disney's Mr Banks expresses Walt's constant conflicts with the "money men" and his eventual overcoming of it, like he did in real life, by coming to convince them all, and, in the movie, by calling them to fly a kite. He is a reconciliation of reality and dream, like Walt Disney was. While the original inspiration for Mr Banks was a king in imagination and dream in spite of and against real life, Disney's Mr Banks, by taking the "leap of faith", that step beyond common sense and rationality, reconciles harsh reality and dream, infusing his bosses with the need to sing. "Saving Mr Banks" rescues not just the personal quest of Traver's father, but on a greater scale, that of all dreamers whose flight was interrupted. It shows, through the message of Walt Disney, that the eternity of imagination can indeed make peace with the exactness of figures and money men's world. Only Walt Disney (he did exist! that is what one marvels at, after watching the wonderful interpretation of Tom Hanks in "Saving Mr Banks") could- and, in the movie, it looks like he still can- pull that out…. That's it; if you watch this movie you realize it was perfectly possible that there once was someone who could be best described by the beautiful expression "Innocence in Action"...