Mary Poppins
An Analytical Essay
12/17/2012
Mary Poppins comes into Jane and
Michael’s life with a change of the wind and promises to stay until the wind
changes again. Her mission is to put things right before she has to leave. The
inevitable truth of her impending departure after she does this is what grounds
the whole movie. She seems to be aimlessly gallivanting all over the
countryside, taking the kids on all sorts of adventures, but in the meanwhile,
things are being cleverly planned to bring the father and mother back to their
senses. She takes special care not to get too attached to the kids. At the end
of the movie, her umbrella tells her- the kids love their parents more than
her, and she says- That’s as it should be.
The movie begins with Bert
performing a one man band in the park. In his own words, he is performing a rendition
of “comical poems, suitable for the occasion, extemporized and thought up
before your very own eyes”. This is the entertainment myth in all its glory. At
the end of the performance, he talks directly to the audience and leads the
audience to 17 Cherry Tree Lane, where Jane and Michael live.
Once inside the house, one gets
thoroughly grounded on the time period in which the story is happening. The
mother returns home ecstatic after a meeting for women’s suffrage. While she is
singing about women voting, the cooks and nanny join her and the shot that has
all four women in the frame, singing at the top of their voices is symbolic of
the new thirst for equality that women were experiencing at the time.
Pretty soon, the father comes home
and further drives home the time period by singing- “ Its grand to be an
Englishman in 1910, King Edward’s on the throne, it’s the age of men.”
The admiral’s booming shots keep
time throughout the movie and are indicative of how many days Mary Poppins
stays with the kids. Mary Poppins would have seemed overly cold if not for her
enduring friendship with Bert and the laughing uncle. Her relationship with
them makes her more human and likeable.
Mary Poppins comes floating down
with her umbrella after all the other nanny applicants get blown away with a
sudden gust of wind. Mary Poppins’ umbrella is perfectly poised in her hand,
whereas the other nannies get carried away by their upturned umbrellas; very
much like witches with wayward brooms.
The chimney sweeps dancing on the
rooftops of London are so synchronized in their dancing, but their dance is so
casual that one tends to think this perfect dance routine is not because of
practice off camera, but simply because they’ve got together and done this
rooftop dance on many evenings just like that day picturized in the movie. This
is a very difficult effect to pull off. But again the entertainment myth is in
full effect. In fact, Bert calls out the
names of the steps before they do it, and the rest of the lyrics are just a
repetition of the same phrase- Step in Time. This makes the sudden burst of coordinated
dancing more believable in the viewer’s eyes.
If one were to choose the word
‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ as a gram, it would lead us through a
merry dance through the movie until the final upheaval, where the father is
getting shamefully fired from his job at the bank, and he suddenly starts
snickering. He shouts out the word filled with glee, to the utmost shock of the
stuck up bankers, and says that what Mary Poppins said was true; the word does
make everything better. A lot of incidents are responsible for this sudden change
in his disposition, but this is the point at which the story comes full circle.
The concrete universal in this case is the fact that he finally understands
what’s going on in his children’s minds.
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