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Written 1/2/14
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Buy it... if you long for another fleeting return by Thomas Newman
to the brightly sentimental harmonies and more conventional instrumental
techniques of his early career successes.
Avoid it... if you demand an even-keeled listening experience, the
wildly disparate, evolving emotions of the main character in this film,
as well as the enthusiasm conveyed for the movie industry, all together
forcing Newman to employ a wide range of tones in a way that doesn't
compete with the plentiful, famous source material.
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| Newman |
Saving Mr. Banks: (Thomas Newman) Given how tightly
controlled the Disney universe is about depictions of itself, it's a
pleasure to witness the relatively smooth development of Saving Mr.
Banks, a sentimental 2013 telling of author P. L. Travers'
childhood, how it relates to her famous story for Mary Poppins,
and the wooing of the rights to that tale by Walt Disney himself.
Fortunately, current Disney executives decided to co-produce the
Australian-led development of the film, opting after some consideration
not to buy the script simply with the intent to squash it. With Tom
Hanks as Disney and Emma Thompson as Travers, Saving Mr. Banks
follows parallel storylines, using her painful haggling over the
evolution of Mary Poppins on screen to convey flashbacks about
the troublesome childhood that plagued her all her life. Even though
Travers eventually acquiesced to Disney to the extent that the famous
1964 film could be made, she remained disdainful of the adaptation
thereafter. Her objections to the animation portions of Saving Mr.
Banks in particular caused so such animosity that when she, in the
1990's, agreed to allow the 2004 stage adaptation of the musical to be
made, she explicitly refused to allow even the Sherman Brothers, who
wrote the music for Mary Poppins and were still active, to
provide additional new music. All of this strife supplied the drama for
Saving Mr. Banks, to which critics responded positively, yielding
significant consideration from awards groups for the movie. There's
something comforting about the fact that Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke,
and Richard M. Sherman were still alive at the time this 2013 film
debuted, Robert B. Sherman having passed away just the year prior. It's
a challenging film in many regards, Travers never accepting what was
clearly a classic film that correctly overrode her objections, and for
its soundtrack the 2013 story was provided by veteran musical chameleon
Thomas Newman. Clearly, not only was the music of the Sherman brothers
utilized in this picture, but the composers themselves were major
characters. With Mary Poppins music wafting through this film
almost constantly, Newman was faced with a challenging proposition:
writing a functional, self-contained score without attempting to compete
with the Sherman tunes in any way. To accomplish this task, Newman
avoided any adaptation of those melodies into his own material, instead
pointing his music at the primary characters themselves, Travers'
personality in particular. Given the totally disjointed realms of
existence separating the author from the final film, this choice is an
extremely effective one. Still, there is enough source application of
the Sherman songs for Mary Poppins (mostly in development) to
ground the soundtrack in the proper place.
For enthusiasts of Newman's music,
Saving Mr.
Banks represents a striking return to his 1990's style of lighter
drama, a genuinely heartfelt and traditionally melodic score that
applies touches of his 2000's rhythmic and instrumental creativity
without sacrificing the orchestrally dramatic portions of the work. The
even bigger hurdle that Newman had to jump for
Saving Mr. Banks
was the balance between the excitement of the movie industry (and the
Disney world) in the early 1960's and Travers' own significant personal
troubles. Newman handles the former by approaching it with his plucky
sense of rhythmic enthusiasm that defines so many of his best works, his
slightly off-kilter chords and meters literally suggesting a different
era while enunciating these ideas with brightly optimistic tones. Disney
himself is provided a sprightly fanfare in "Mr. Disney" and "The
Magic Kingdom." The other half of the score represents the difficult
dichotomy of Travers herself, at times her pompous, stubborn nature
represented by equally spirited, slightly jazzy personality in "Mrs. P.
L. Travers" while elsewhere the painful history of the woman bringing
forth nearly ambient, very slight renditions of themes, sometimes with
dissonance, in a cue like "To My Mother." By "Ginty My Love,"
Newman's dramatic string theme for the character finally asserts itself
with traditional dramatic smoothness. There are times when all of these
different facets of the score's melodic and structural puzzle pieces
combine effectively, the opening "Travers Goff" an excellent cue that
highlights the score's most accessible material, followed closely by
"Walking Bus." This, as well as the like-minded cues for illustrious
action, whether from Travers or from the movie industry, is fantastic
throwback Newman music. The specialty instruments complimenting the
strings also remind of the 1990's, some of the glassy elements replaced
with the piano and woodwinds representing that era for the composer.
Expect the glockenspiel to reflect the "magic" of the kingdom
involved. The album presentation of
Saving Mr. Banks provides
upwards of 40 minutes of rather light but involving Newman material.
Sprinkled in the midst of it are performances by Jason Schwartzman and
B.J. Novak as the Sherman brothers, along with some humorous Thompson
retorts. A second CD on a "special edition" product includes demo
versions recorded by the Sherman brothers (and quite well performed, it
must be said) for the original production, along with a selection of
songs from the finished mix of
Mary Poppins. For Newman
collectors, the listening experience will be one that requires some
rearrangement to condense the various, disparate emotional portions into
suite-like presentations of the otherwise fleetingly short cues. It's an
intelligent score that traverses the shadow of the Sherman brothers very
well and it should disappoint no one in the film music world to see
Newman receive an award or two for this effort.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:
For Thomas Newman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.14
(in 37 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.18
(in 60,837 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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