By Rich Cali
A few months ago, I sent out a Facebook request to friends to help me provide some good DVD’s for my youngest, a two-year-old named Bella. She had been watching the same movie over and over again, so I wanted to introduce her to some other good movies. Today, as she watched Mary Poppins for the 456th time, I found myself watching it for the 1,001st. One of my other children asked me, “Don’t you get tired of this?” I could honestly answer no. Mary Poppins is a wonderful musical movie. As I started to explain this to my kids, I realized that I should write a review for this blog. My older daughter, Christiana, then informed me that there is a Making of Mary Poppins movie coming out, and I figured that I better do this before the movie is released, lest anyone think that I stole my ideas from someone else. So here it is.
Mary Poppins? Why not give my kids a science documentary or a “Christian” movie that teaches some kind of moral? Mary Poppins is a classic movie that has and will stand the test of time, and I believe there are many reasons for this. First, Julie Andrews is a natural beauty that fits the persona of an English nanny at the turn of the Twentieth Century, may I even say “an English rose”? Her hair style, clothes, and manners are spot on, not to mention her very delightful voice. To add to the charm, Dick Van Dyke’s slapstick humor gives just the right amount of comic relief. The musical score is exceptional (I remember singing, or at least humming, “Just a spoonful of sugar…” and “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” when I was a school boy myself.) The movie is even complete with a parts played by Ed Wynn, a most memorable “I love to laugh”, and Arthur Treature, who once had a fish and chip chain right here in America! This movie stood out as one of the first to include animation along with live action. These features add to the movie, but none could carry it. It’s the universal story that makes this film great.
To summarize the story, some misbehaving English children are running off nannies. One gets the sense right away that they are not that bad. The current nanny quits because the children have run off again to find a lost kite. (Really? Can she in good conscience quit while the children are still missing?) In any case, they need a new nanny because the father is a dutiful banker and the mother is a political activist, working for women’s suffrage around 1910. Mary Poppins appears on the scene in an extraordinary way to fill the position and begins showing the children unusual adventures. Mr. Banks, the father, objects to all this worthless frivolity, wanting the children to approach life with their heads out of the clouds and their feet on the ground. After the children cause a run on the bank resulting in Mr. Banks getting sacked from his job, the story climaxes when Burt the local jack-of-all-trades helps Mr. Banks to realize that his children will grow up too quickly, and he will have missed it while pursing self achievement. The movie ends when the father accepts his firing, and the family skips down the street to fly a kite.
The important thing to note about the plot is that the main character is NOT Mary Poppins; nor are the children the focus. The main character, the one who has a change of heart in a classic “man against himself” plotline, is George Banks. He must overcome his own obstacles, not Mary. Mary Poppins, the audience is told right from the beginning, is “practically perfect in every way”; she does not have any improvement to make. She is beautiful, sings like a bird, has excellent manners, and handles herself with the greatest poise. “It’s a jolly holiday with Mary.” As if this was not enough, she has magical abilities. She can fly with her umbrella, pop in and out of chalk drawings, pull anything out of her carpet bag, and even understand dog-speak. Her perfection is more than just being a good witch, though. She plays the part of an angel. At the very opening scene before the opening credits start, she is sitting on a cloud, looking down, omnisciently watching what this family needs. She comes to set things right, saying she will stay “until the wind changes.” She wisely queues in the children that their father “can’t see past the end of his nose,” prompting the children to “help” their father see things right. Mary does not need any kind of transformation at all.
No, the one who needs to change is Mr. Banks. At the beginning, he sees the job of the one to mold and shape his children as the job of a hireling. While he rightly understands the raising of children as one in which influences an entire society and civilization, he sees no responsibility for himself as father. He gets angry at the children when they begin enjoying the escapades provided by their nanny. He tells the children to “be quiet” and “go away” and that they’re giving him a headache. He is far removed from his children, as when Michael says, “Father has never taken us anywhere.” His alienation from his children is clearly the conflict that drives the plot.
As a result of Mr. Banks’ lack of leadership, Mrs. Banks has no connection to the home either. They have someone to cook their meals, a house keeper to clean their home, and likewise a nanny to raise their children. When the children offer their qualifications for a new nanny, one can’t help but see that they are describing what they want in a mother. As she listens to the list, her facial expression seems to suggest internal turmoil. Like Mr. Banks, Winifred has no connection to her children either, and consequently leaves them in the hands of a stranger (Burt is not known to her.) in order to run off to a political rally. Neither parent is actually parenting.
Even though Winifred and George Banks undergo the change through the story, perhaps the character Mary Poppins gets to occupy the position in the title of the movie because she is the saintly agent who brings about the change in the family. She facilitates a change in the parents, who have not properly cherished their children, by “putting ideas into their heads.” The climax of the story is when Burt affects Mr. Banks while talking to him at the family’s chimney. Burt is the foil of Mr. Banks. Burt says at the beginning, “I does what I likes, and I likes what I does.” He is not in a “cage” like Mr. Banks. As Burt tells the children, “Cages comes in all shapes and sizes.” Burt is not beholding to anyone and has time to enjoy the park with Mary, console a friend when he is sad, and dance with the children on the rooftops. He seems to be the human agent working along-side the angelic one. From a Christian point of view, I interpret Mary Poppins as the “Christ figure”, the deity who suffers for the people (Remember how hurt she was when she had to leave the children?), and Burt is the Christian who loves and admires the deity and physically serves on (her) behalf; the focus then being the “divine being”, Mary Poppins.
Mary Poppins contains a very “pro-family” message, pretty significant for when this movie came out. R.L. Dabney, the American Presbyterian theologian predicted the disintegration of the family in 1875. “When the family shall no longer have a head, and the great foundation for the subordination of children –the mother’s example—is gone; when the mother shall have found another sphere than her home for her energies; when she shall have exchanged the sweet charities of domestic love and sympathy for the fierce passions of the hustings [i.e, the political arena]; when families shall be disrupted at the caprice of either party, and the children scattered as foundlings from their hearthstone,–it requires no wisdom to see that a race of sons will be reared nearer akin to devils than to men.” His warning was true for 1910, the time of the setting for the movie; it was true in 1965 when the movie was released, and it is a message needed as much today. “Husbands love your wives” and “raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” echoes in Mary Poppins, and is message that will endure for all time. And I will continue to watch this film again and again.
