I had a magical New Year’s Eve in part because I went to see the film “Saving Mr. Banks,” which tells the story of how a folksy, wily Walt Disney cajoled – actually, “prevailed upon” would be a better choice of words – a frosty P.L. Travers to sell him the rights to her “Mary Poppins” books so that he could make the film we all know and love. This movie features superb performances led by Emma Thompson’s commanding turn as Mrs. Travers – never P.L., Pamela or Pam, a nom de plum anyway; a subtle one by Tom Hanks as Walt – never Mr. Disney; and a charismatic appearance by Colin Farrell as the imaginative but alcoholic father who gave Mrs. Travers so much material to work with. (The title refers to the character of the father in “Mary Poppins,” a put-upon bank executive who learns the importance of being a parent, and indeed Mrs. Travers’ father was a bank manager, though not as successful as the father in the “Mary Poppins” film.)

Like the clumsy novel and movie “Atonement,” “Saving Mr. Banks” asks you to consider whether art can redeem the past. Unlike “Atonement,” “Saving Mr. Banks” understands that the answer to that question is “Alas, no.” Read more

Christmastide – which actually begins with the birth of Jesus and ends with his baptism – is also a time for commemorating martyrs. St. Stephen, considered by the Church to be the first martyr, is remembered on Boxing Day, Dec. 26, while Dec. 29 is the feast of St. Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, who was murdered in the cathedral there on Dec. 29, 1170 by the henchmen of the king he loved, Henry II. (The feast day is generally the day the saint died, not his or her birthday.)

Becket’s relationship with Henry, as you might imagine, was a complicated affair that has proved catnip to artists, filmmakers and writers like poet T.S. Eliot (“Murder in the Cathedral”). My favorite interpretation is Jean Anouilh’s Tony Award-winning play “Becket,” which became a highly entertaining movie starring Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole, who died just recently.

Anouilh had reimagined Sophocles’ “Antigone,” with its iconoclastic heroine, as a metaphor for the French Resistance. In “Becket,” he gives us a homosocial, if not homoerotic, account of a strong male bond broken by a lack of self-knowledge. Read more

Reading Mrs. Travers

King to bishop