Mary Poppins Returns in a Time of Social Convulsion

I came late to the Mary Poppins party. I must have seen the 1965 film as a kid since I recognize the songs although I don’t remember the film. In contrast, my Significant Other is a major fan and can sing all the songs. We watched the original last month in preparation for the release of Mary Poppins Returns. We saw the sequel on New Year’s Eve and I now I feel compelled to say something about it.

But what? As a musical, the sequel has some catchy songs that could become known, such as the touching "The Place Where the Lost Things Go," although not on the level of “Chim-Chim-Cheree” and “A Spoonful of Sugar” and, you know, that song with the long title. The hip-hop inflected songs with Lin-Manuel Miranda, set in a music hall, bring a dash of that Hamilton magic to the show. The dance sequences are OK, but don’t expect An American in Paris. The costumes are gorgeous with the over-the-top colors and styles now seen on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Emily Blunt brings a mesmerizing quality to the role with her style, wildly posh accent and bright lipstick. The rakish angle of her hat in the movie's posters suggests a femme fatale from 1940s film noir.

What intrigued me most was Blunt's depiction of Mary Poppins, along with the chaotic world she touches. The movie grabbed me on the level of social commentary, myth and psychology. If Julie Andrews played Mary Poppins as a kind, caring and firm nanny in the original set in the evolving post-Victorian London, Blunt remade the same character with a layer of chilly, cyborgian empathy in a London ravaged by the 1930s depression and the looming threat of all-out class warfare.

Both movies, but especially the sequel, have Mary Poppins flying in to a household of embattled and flailing men, economically adrift in a society convulsed by social pressures and marked by women raising their voices for change—women's suffrage in the original, support for the destitute working class in the sequel. The children prefer an energetic free-range lifestyle that alarms the parents. The men (father in the original, son in the sequel) work for a bank that embodies the rapacious values of soulless capitalism. Park attendants stand for those who enforce the rules with a ferocious intensity, while a sea captain and his loyal assistant make obsessive gestures in defense of the dying empire. From the depths of the social order, the grimy and jolly chimney sweeps and lamplighters wield their tools with the force of iron-willed Bolshevik revolutionary cadres in Ten Days that Shook the World, ready the sweep away the established order.

Into this chaos flies Mary Poppins with her talking umbrella and carpet bag, just as in the original, to set things right and have fun in the process. She’s a character in search of a comparison. Is she the silent stone Monolith from 2001? No, too faceless. A strict Freudian psychoanalyst, inscrutable and silent, upon which patients project their own emotions as they struggle for insight? That’s getting closer with the notion of projecting an identity on to Mary Poppins, but a psychoanalyst is passive and not directly involved in the patient’s daily life. Besides, Mary Poppins likes to talk.

She strikes me as a firm and creative parental influence, but one who insists on keeping an adult distance that preserves her private sphere. After mulling that thought, it struck me that Mary Poppins reminds me of Shane, the drifting gunslinger who helps a beleaguered homesteading family under attack from a cattleman. In the 1953 film Shane, the lead character forms a deep bond with the family’s son Joey while also having unexpressed feelings for his mother, Marion. Like Mary Poppins, Shane shows Joey values and defends the family through the climactic crisis. Shane and Mary Poppins are both snappy dressers with a talent for dancing. Shane ends, like both Mary Poppins movies, with the unreadable hero leaving the loving family, coming from nowhere, going somewhere else.

The last scene of Shane could apply to a revised conclusion of Mary Poppins Returns, with children calling after the nanny with pleas that unintentionally reveal the depth of emotion of a parent toward the departing stranger. This would require a gender reversal in Mary Poppins Returns, but I could see the widowed Michael Banks yearning for more with Mary Poppins, and the children begging her as Joey did to Shane:

Pa’s got things for you to do, and Mother wants you, I know she does! ShaneI Shane, come back!

But Shane rides on into the mountains, destination unknown, just as Mary Poppins ascends into the sky with her tight, knowing smile and faraway eyes. She never explains what she does, and denies involvement in any of the marvelous adventures she arranges for the children and her robust blue-collar companions (Dick Van Dyke in the original, Lin-Manuel Miranda in the sequel). A bit of eye moisture hints at her feelings, but to the end Mary Poppins remains a beautiful and tightly wrapped enigma, beyond the reach of those who care for her.

In all fairness, the Mary Poppins books evidently give far more details about her family and friends, and the personal vanity just hinted at in the movies. Mary Poppins Returns does have a song-and-dance number with her eccentric cousin, played by Meryl Streep speaking with an accent that blended Yiddish and Russian-princess tonalities. I found the scene more jarring than illuminating, since it brings in a family element that doesn’t fit with the austere blank-slate Mary Poppins otherwise envisioned.

Dick Van Dyke appears in both movies, 53 years apart, and reprises one of his two roles from the original to great effect. He shows off his 91-year old dancing chops, a great crowd pleaser. I can only hope Emily Blunt can do the same when she's 91. For the record, the Significant Other remarks, "I bet Julie Andrews could dance on the table, she still looks great."

Mary Poppins Returns closes on an effervescent hopeful note, thanks in part to the capitalistic wonders of compound interest. The final scenes shimmer with goodness and social solidarity confirmed against the “lovely London sky” and the evil capitalist banker humiliated one more time for good measure. Will Emily Blunt reprise the role and sail down with the East Wind for more adventures, perhaps Mary Poppins Battles the Blitzkrieg or Mary Poppins Parties with the Rolling Stones? Will she team up with Bruce Willis to make Die Hard With a Spoonful of Sugar?

Only the box office knows for sure.