Mary Poppins Is an Unbearably Sad Movie

We all love the Disney classic, but have you ever paid attention to the ending?

Earlier this year, my wife and I introduced our kids—Sasha, now 10, and Sandy, now 6—to Mary Poppins. We figured they’d love it. The songs, the color, the accents, the wildness of it all. The most famous sequence, when Mary, Bert, Jane, and Michael enter the animated countryside, just goes on and on—and on and on, with no regard for logic or pacing. It’s sheer genius.

But the ending—when Mr. and Mrs. Banks realize that Family Is Important—is, as we like to say now, problematic. For one, of course, there’s the idea that Mrs. Banks, who has throughout the movie been preoccupied by the suffragette movement, only gets her happy ending when she trades in her political ideals for traditional ones. Meanwhile, Mr. Banks tells his boss to take this job and shove it, rejecting tradition and winning props from the audience. It’s all very Disney, of course. The family that stays together pays for movie tickets together.

But forget about the modern-day politicking of the movie. What I’m concerned with is Mary Poppins herself: She has spent a week with the Bankses, coming to love the children and understand the parents. They’ve gone on adventures and met strange characters. She has reconnected with Bert, her magical Cockney jack-of-all-trades quasi-lover. By…