Winds in the East
Mist coming in,
Like something is brewing, about to begin –
Can’t put me finger on what lies in store,
But I feel what’s to happen, all happened
before.
This recitation, which accompanies the opening sequence of Saving Mr. Banks, suggests to the audience that unlike most films with a dominant present time frame, and a flashback time frame that isn’t quite as real, this film employs an almost opposite strategy. Director John Lee Hancock explains, “We’re combining these stories in a weird way in her brain, and we realize her memory is a little faulty—these memories have become one, along with what she’s experiencing now.”
When, in 1961, Walt Disney persuaded Pamela Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, to come to Los Angeles in an attempt to secure the screen rights to her book, he wasn’t aware of the autobiographical nature of the work, or the cascade of reminiscences that was about to be unleashed within the author’s imagination.
So while I was tasked with the unusual requirements of not one, but two, periods to depict, the larger challenge was how to confect a visual scheme that encompassed both, and illuminated the permeable and malleable nature of time and memory as experienced by P.L. Travers, as she resists the transformation of her book into a screenplay.
In addition to the challenges of creating 1906 Australia and 1961 Los Angeles, there was also the responsibility of depicting the Disney Studio, and in particular, Walt’s office for the first time ever on film.
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