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I want to tell a story about how a thirty-year-old man who had watched Mary Poppins probably upwards of a dozen times throughout his life, finally saw it for the first time.

It’s a story about how suddenly all the themes of a hackneyed Disney classic hit me square between the eyes in the form of an old woman in tattered clothes singing about birds and bread and tuppence.

Ultimately, this is a story about perspective.

And Mary Poppins is a story about perspective. The film is about both the least of these and the greatest of these. The low and the high. Children and parents. Buskers and bankers. Birds, stars, and chimney sweeps.

As a matter of fact, these themes neatly divide the film and provide its structure¹. They establish two thematic movements, if you will, each with its own theme song.

MOVEMENT I
A Spoonful of Sugar

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The first movement of the film is all about the children, or, more broadly, the lowly. That is, anyone who finds themselves to be at the mercy of others, experiencing the necessary growing pains of doing a thing one doesn’t want to do, but will ostensibly be for one’s ultimate good.

The remedy prescribed for this undesirable situation by Mary Poppins is, of course, A Spoonful of Sugar.

Each adventure the children experience with Mary reveals a new fanciful facet in the prismatic doctrine often summed up by the phrase “making the best of one’s circumstances.” They gamify their chores at home, with Bert they learn to imaginatively fill in the voids where reality is found lacking, and then a visit Uncle Albert provides a hysterical caution against too much sugar in the medicine, which requires a healthy dose of reality to come back down to earth.

These are the fun and games, and it’s worth noting that Bert accompanies all of these adventures—except the chores at home, which is when the Spoonful of Sugar song is actually sung, but he knows the song nevertheless.

So let’s take a look at Bert for a moment.

Lowliness with Contentment

The fact that Bert is present in each of these outings makes him something of the surrogate father figure to the absent Mr. Banks. And if you’re looking for a foil—i.e. a character who contrasts or mirrors another thematically—you cannot do better than Bert.

Where Mr. Banks is a wealthy banker, Bert is a poor busker. Where Mr. Banks is stoic and rigid, Bert is jovial and flexible. Where Mr. Banks insists on order, quiet, and cleanliness, Bert is a messy musical mosaic and a charry chimney sweep. Where Mr. Banks is adamantly defined by his status and position at the bank—whether he likes it or not, Bert is merrily mercurial, eagerly applying himself to whatever he puts his hands to—he does what he likes, and he likes what he does.

Where Mr. Banks sings:

Bert sings:

In short, where Mr. Banks is high, Bert is low.

This lowness is the first perspective of the film. All these adventures, accompanied by Bert, show how to hold a low position with joy and dignity. A position in which your control or influence of circumstance is negligible. This is the position the children are in—the position all children are in—so these are lessons for children. But they are also lessons for those grown Berts of us, getting through life utilizing the few and varied skills that we have, sometimes a new skill every day, holding out our hats, imploring the mercy of passersby for our daily bread.

Which brings us to the second movement.

MOVEMENT II
Feed the Birds

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And we now come to the point in our story which is the reason I felt the need to write about this silly movie in the first place. We come to the point where the film broke me. Which very rarely happens in my movie watching, and I’ve watched a lot of movies. And, as I said, I’ve seen this particular film my fair share of times as well.

In a perfectly timed tone shift, exactly halfway through the portion of film in which Mary Poppins is present, we get the song Feed the Birds, which, as we are about to see—and as those of you who are less dense than myself surely already know—is the most important part of this entire movie.

The song Feed the Birds is prefaced by a warning to the children, before their outing to the city with their father, that Mr. Banks may not be able to point out all the sights that the children want to see.

Mary then reveals a snow globe.

And she begins to sing. A very familiar song, I would have sworn I knew all the words.

But this time was different.

Because this time—when the tone changed and the old woman started pleading on behalf of the hungry birds—this time I had a sleepy two-year-old leaning on my shoulder.

And suddenly, I got it.

It wasn’t about the cathedral or the bird woman. It wasn’t about being nice and generous to poor people rather than hoarding your gold like a curmudgeonly miser.

It was about the birds.

Because the birds were the children.

The children that needed to be fed the bread crumbs of joyful work, and merry laughter, and healthy tears, and contentment, and togetherness. Bread crumbs that cost tuppence—pennies—of the time and attention which is allotted to each of us. Tuppence which may very well be better spent feeding a little one now than stored up and invested in our own future greatness.

Suddenly all these things felt obvious, but they had never occurred to me until my own perspective was manifestly changed. In a word, I had moved from the secondary target audience, i.e. a child, to the primary target audience, i.e. a father.

And then the full intricacy of the film fell into place.

I won’t lay out every instance here, but seriously, watch the film again and pay attention to the birds.

The Higher Perspective

But, if the first movement was about lowliness with contentment, the second movement is about the responsibility of those who do have the ability to change not only their own situation, but that of others as well. The responsibility to feed the birds.

And here again, Bert takes up the mantle when Mr. Banks drops the ball.

In his final role as chimney sweep, Bert and the children experience the literal reversal of the low and the high.

From the lowly ashes, he and the children rise up above the rooftops of London, achieving almost the highest of perspectives.

Almost.

But there is yet a higher perspective in the film.

Mary Poppins—who comes down from above the clouds, where the stars abide.

Mary Poppins, whose own foil is the lowly bird woman, watched over by the apostles themselves (who once upon a time argued over which among them would be the greatest). Mary Poppins and the bird woman—the lowest and the highest—both pleading passersby to feed the birds.

Mary Poppins, the North Star, guiding those in high positions who can’t see past the end of their noses, or their balance sheets, or their cell phones, to look about them and see the world under their feet with a new perspective . . .

1. When you think of it this way, you can see just how neatly the film is structured.
   • The complete runtime is 2 hours and 19 minutes
   • 23 minutes of prelude or exposition—meeting Bert, the family, etc.
   • At 23 minutes Mary Poppins arrives at the house
   • 23:00 – 1:19:00 (56 min) = Movement I: A Spoonful of Sugar
   • At 1 hour 19 minutes Mr. Banks comes home late and “decides” to take the children on his own outing to the bank
   • At 1 hour 24 minutes Mary sings Feed the Birds
   • 1:24:00 – 2:17:00 (53 min) = Movement II: Feed the Birds
   • 2:17:00 – 2:19:00 = Roll credits ↩︎