Mary Poppins Returns

More than aerial views of old London, more than underwater ballet and animated episodes, more even than the spectacle of nearly every cast member rising upwards with balloons, the strongest takeaway image from Mary Poppins Returns is of Emily Blunt's descent hundreds of feet to alight with a graceful, purposeful step: Mary Poppins stepping out of the sky and, for many of us, out of our past.

The other takeaway is of Emily Blunt's eyes. Pale blue - gray, often seen in reflection, they convey feelings independently from Mary Poppins's prim smile: anticipatory delight, disapproval, determination, tenderness, and sadness. We catch that sadness at the end, as we did 44 years ago when Julie Andrews's Mary Poppins, having restored the emotionally remote Mr. Banks to his children Jane and Michael, floated off unnoticed among flying kites in the last number.


In this sequel, it's grown - up "Michael Banks" (Ben Whishaw) who has withdrawn from his three children, mourning for his wife, beset by self - doubt and financial ruin. Early in the movie, searching the attic for a document to save the family home from foreclosure, Michael opens a musical jewelry box. Its little tune accompanies "A Conversation" with his late wife about what it's been like "since you went away," ending with his plaintive question, "When you went away -- where did you go?"

The father's need, and the children's efforts to help him, fill up the rest of the movie. Mary Poppins herself hangs back, observing with those beautiful eyes.

The movie was directed by Rob Marshall, with a screenplay written by David Magee and a story by Magee, Marshall, and John DeLuca. The songs and score for the film were composed by Marc Shaiman, with song lyrics written by Scott Wittman and Shaiman.

The story "rhymes" with the original, says Lin - Manuel Miranda (playing "Jack" in the movie). (Vincent Dowd, BBC, 12/26/18). [That's a necessary thing, but also distracting, as I was constantly aware of the creators' thinking: "Step in Time" was an athletic dance for a troupe of chimney sweeps on the rooftops of London; let's make "Trip a Little Light Fantastic" an athletic dance for a troupe of lamplighters under the London streets. The original Mrs. Banks was a suffragette; let's devote her daughter Jane to the labor movement.

But the creators also apparently agreed with my friend Susan, who, even as a child, lost interest during the intentionally charming musical episodes that padded the original movie - "Jolly Holiday" inside a chalk painting, and "I Love to Laugh" with an eccentric uncle. For the sequel, every antic episode connects with the children's initiatives to save their father. For example, the children crack their mother's "priceless" china bowl when they argue over pawning it to pay their father's debts. Mary Poppins takes the children with Jack into the landscape painted on the ceramic -- a great conceit as the road is cracked, and the rim of the horizon is a literal rim. The next day, to repair the bowl, Mary Poppins leads them to the fix - it shop of her cousin Topsy, played with an olio of accents by Meryl Streep, Hollywood's queen of accents. In both movies, the turning point happens in a confrontation with the father's employer at the bank, but this time, it's the children standing up to the president on their father's behalf.

What worked to prepare the original's emotional payoff still works for the sequel. In 1964, Julie Andrews sang a touching song at the children's bedtime about the little old woman who calls "feed the birds, tuppence a bag" to people like Mr. Banks, too wrapped up in his own business to notice. Now, Emily Blunt puts the children to bed with a song about "lost things," an oblique answer to Mr. Banks's question, "Where did you go?" In the original, it's young Michael returning tuppence to his father that changes the man's heart; now it's the children's reprising the song about lost things, and he gets the answer to his question: She's here, he says to his children, in your eyes, in your smile.... It's the heart of the story, and it lands.


The music doesn't draw attention to itself, always directing us towards the story. Except for the melancholy "Conversation" and a jaunty song about the "Royal Doulton Music Hall," every song is a lesson addressed to the kids - why you should use your imagination, where lost things go, how a change in perspective can change your outlook, how the cover is not the book, how to seek light when you're lost, and, twice, where to look for encouragement (up).

Emily Blunt, on NPR's Fresh Air explained how she recorded her songs with full orchestra, then acted the songs with soundtrack playing, then, finally, filmed the songs with instrumental tracks playing only in an earpiece, while people on the set heard her sing a cappella. What we hear in the movie, then, is a seamless collage, transitions from dialogue to music and back. In the first notes we hear, the orchestrations recall the lush, shimmering sound of the original overture; traces of the original score by Richard and Robert Sherman are discernible in the underscoring.

So, full disclosure: I had nightmares before the movie came out, envisioning an action - hero Mary Poppins rocketing across the clouds on her back, reclining like a Vargas girl. I woke up sweating, afraid to have the memory of the original ruined. It would be hard to overstate how the original movie, one of the first I ever saw, shaped my world view. (See "Mary Poppins Meets Scrooge: Saving Mr. Banks," my blog post of 12/26/2013). The lyrics tripled my vocabulary. I identified with young Michael (my age at the time), identified Mother with Julie Andrews, and, most of all, identified with the distance between father and children. Driving home from this sequel, I wept. Why? The movie seems to be aimed, not so much at today's children, or even today's parents, but at the hearts of Boomers: My bright young mother, my ambitious young father, my dreamy young self -- Where have they gone? I know, I heard Mary Poppins say it, "Maybe all you're missing lives inside of you."

That's good. But I miss the days when someone would descend from the sky and walk into my life with a graceful, purposeful step.

[Directed and produced by Rob Marshall, "Mary Poppins Returns" features Emily Blunt in the title role, and also stars Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer and Julie Walters with Colin Firth and Meryl Streep. Music by Marc Shaiman. Lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman. Screenplay by David Magee, from story by Magee, Rob Marshall, and John DeLuca.]