Walt Disney did not die immediately after making Mary Poppins, but he had made the best film his studio would make in his lifetime. Technically, it is not part of the animation canon, but it is such a remarkable film that I cannot leave it off a list of “what Walt taught me.” All that the geniuses of the studio had learned from the Mickey short cartoons to Sleeping Beauty came together in a movie practically perfect.
Poppins does everything well. The music harmonizes with the story. The acting is solid combining the genius of Dick Van Dyke with the luminous musical theater sound of Julie Andrews. Van Dyke deserves criticism (or his vocal coach does) for his “accent” and some of the numbers go a bit too long (looking at you Chimney Sweeps), but these are superficial problems. The entire film is jolly and profound and those are two of the hardest things to do simultaneously. Few films make me laugh, but this does (see: wooden leg named Smith). Many films make me cry (starting with Bambi), but very, very few films do both.
Let’s be clear: the movie is better than the books because the books were therapy for a disturbed mind. Walt gave us a saner Poppins. Few if any today would know Poppins, but for Walt. He saved the character.
What did Walt teach me?
He made me look back and realize that the world that was contained beauty as well as sorrow. If nostalgia can go too far, then it can also be ignored. Nothing was every bit as beautiful or as simply good as Cherry Lane (what was the life of the servants downstairs really like?). Yet Walt reminds us of a lost gentility that must not be forgotten.
Walt reminded me that working for money is vile. A man works for his family, for his nation, for the common good, but never for the two pence. Even the best causes, votes for women, are not worth our joy.
As for feeding the birds, while it is true that if you feed the birds you will get fat birds, it is also true that men who do not understand that song are not worthy of marriage or civilization. God Almighty hates our dreams of grandeur, especially when done in His name. We ignore the beauty that God lavishes on us because we rush to our cubicles to do meaningless jobs for people who only know our names to manipulate us for further service in building their little kingdoms of self.
Poppins knows better. She sings:
All around the cathedral the saints and apostles
Look down as she sells her wares
Although you can’t see it, you know they are smiling
Each time someone shows that he caresThough her words are simple and few
Listen, listen, she’s calling to you
Feed the birds, tuppence a bag
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bagThough her words are simple and few
Listen, listen, she’s calling to you
Feed the birds, tuppence a bag
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag.
Do not waste even a single moment of your life working for a company, even a Christian ministry, that demands all the tuppence for the Temple. Christ is coming to whip those people out of His Church. You might flee His wrath to come, but better to go out and have the joy of feeding the birds. Frolic in His Creation!
Long before the fabulous film, Saving Mr Banks, our family knew the key scene of Mary Poppins was when Mr. Banks walked to the bank knowing his job was lost due to his children’s virtues. Vice fires virtue. If you have not faced that day in the workplace, you are blessed. I have walked that long walk . . . for many reasons (some good and some bad) and when you must lose your dream because of virtue, family, and integrity, then the death is real, but so is the hope. Virtue is freed from vice.
Mr Banks can be free of the bank.
Mr Banks is a good man crushed by a bad system he accepts. Mr Banks has great dreams, but his dreams are striving for financial success. These dreams are unworthy. The simplest pleasure is better than the love of money, power, and the world. Walt uses the music of the Sherman brothers to press the case that all the Apostles, all of civilization, urge us to abandon these false loves and turn to the love of God and our neighbor. There is more joy in feeding the birds and so giving funds to the wise old Bird Lady than in the entirety of Mr Banks’ bank.
Walt would go to the Sherman brothers on future days and ask them to play “that song.” He found freedom from the money changers who cared less about the folks than fleecing them. Walt liked money but as a means to better ends. With his trains and parks, Walt knew how to play if ever a man knew that great art.
Playing matters. Weirdly, we are caught between people who play too much and people who never play. Don’t we need the balance that Mr. Banks learned? We do need balance badly just now. The leaders of our time sit in board rooms and vote away integrity in lawyerly procedures, dried up husks pretending to be men. Outside the poor are exploited and beauty is ignored as we grind, grind, grind at the grindstone.
We need children badly. More often now many of us older folk are cut off from kids: they break our things, are messy, smelly and irritating. We need kids because they remind us of our status before God, a being full grown before whom all creation is in childhood.
For everyone facing the grifters, the Scrooges, the frauds who pollute the Temple with their corruption and see these banksters winning while the Banks fail, this movie is a balm from Burbank. The grifters cannot last in the face of the rectitude of one woman, one Poppins, who is straight and true. The Scrooges are shown to be miserable in their miserly ways and unable to find even simple pleasures in their piles of English pounds. One little joke will fell them. As for the banksters, the old frauds can repent and find joy or wait to be driven from the Temple by the Lord Jesus. All we need to do is trust and play. God is so sovereign that all work is mere play: He does not need our efforts, but delights to see what we do as a Father delights in the crafts of the child.
Let’s go fly a kite, Uncle Walt.
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