There’s an old chestnut in Hollywood about how no one in the town reads.  If that’s the case, Saving Mr. Banks is the exception that proves the rule.  The depth of Emma Thompson’s understanding of P.L. Travers’s character is astonishing, and it’s clear that she took the role seriously enough to read, while the scriptwriters actually did research.  It’s heartbreaking to hear what one of the scriptwriters reported–and the brilliant Tom Hanks has just the right antidote to the sadness:

Last night, when we were doing a Q. and A., Kelly [Marcel] said [Travers’s] grandchildren had said she’d died not loving anyone and nobody loving her. At which point, Tom burst into song.

You sang? Tom, what did you sing?

Tom Hanks “Let’s Go Fly a Kite.” I needed to Disney-fy up the sad ending. [Laughs.] 

And here’s Tom Hanks in that same interview about Saving Mr. Banks in the NYT, with fascinating insight into how Disney came to make the film.

Disney’s chief executive, Robert A. Iger, called and] said: “Look, we have a bit of a circumstance here. We have to make this movie about Walt Disney. We didn’t develop it. It came to us from somewhere else. It’s a great script, and if we don’t do it, that means somebody else might be able to do it, and we’re going to look heartless. But if we quash it, we’ll look like we’re trying to hide something. So will you play Walt Disney?”

http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2014/01/04/movies/awardsseason/index.html

Jerry Griswold reviewed the movie, and he reveals a darker side to the feel-good ending, which enables the corporate to triumph over the creative.  Included in the review is a link to his extraordinary interview  with P.L. Travers in The Paris Review.

http://sdsuchildlit.blogspot.com/2013/12/saving-mr-banks-but-throwing-pl-travers.html

 
The odd thing about Saving Mr. Banks is that in this contest between the creative side and the corporate side, we’re supposed to sympathize with corporate. We’re supposed to join in patronizing the writer. Over all, someone seeing the film would reasonably conclude that Travers was an extraordinarily difficult person and Disney a nice guy. And alas, given their reach, it may be the Disney folks who get the last word.