Doug Lemov discusses film adaptations:
A few weeks ago a transatlantic flight finally caused me to watch Saving Mr. Banks the story of how Walt Disney won P.L. Travers’ trust and warmed her cold, cold heart just enough to get her to gift the ages with a Disney version of her book Mary Poppins.
Decent movie, that Saving Mr. Banks. If nothing else it offers compelling proof that history is a tale told by the winners. The winners being movie makers in this case. It turns out that when you leave it to a movie studio to tell the story of what movies do to books — really nice books — you get a very nice tale indeed, in which the books get really-nicer. Don’t you see? A movie is just an act of love for a book. A movie only wants honor a book and bring it to life — make it live forever, and maybe add a little music. Is that so wrong?
No, the movie tells us. No, it is not wrong at all. It is right! In the end even the curmudgeon-ish author is shown to see it.
But If P.L. Travers told the story of the movie-fication of Poppins it might sound different. After all, she did cry at the official release of Mary Poppins, but it wasn’t tears of appreciative joy. In real life, she cried to see what they had done to her baby.
And in a lot of ways she was right to cry. The movie is fine. Not much wrong with it except Dick Van Dyke’s unconscionable effort at an accent. And the fact that it ain’t the book. That’s the big one. I read the book with my kids a few years back and was stunned, so incredibly stunned, to find it nuanced and complex and rich and fascinating. It was beautiful: anything but schlocky, light years better than the movie, even if I read it in a horrible garble of Van-Dyke Cockney. But I only found out by accident that the book is a jewel. Having a song-and-Dick-Van-Dyke version of the movie out there made me assume for years that I should not read the book. I mean, with a hokie movie like that, who would?
He’s not going to see The Giver.