Tear Jerker / Mary Poppins

Books

• The twins forgetting how to talk to animals when they both turn one year old. Mary Poppins Comes Back wrings similar sadness out of Annabel forgetting her cosmic journey into the world, after she spends one week on Earth.
• Every time Mary Poppins leaves the Banks family, especially when she leaves the children mementos and reminds them that nothing lasts forever. When Jane and Michael ask Mary Poppins in the second and third books how long she will stay, she gives rather vague answers, making her departures unpleasant surprises for the Banks family. P.L. Travers claimed that even she cried when Mary Poppins left the Banks children for good in Mary Poppins Opens the Door.

Disney film

And now my life's ambitions go, in one fell blow...
It's quite a bitter pill to take.

• Jane and Michael aren't bad kids; they do their best to behave and want to not cause trouble. It doesn't stop them from running away from every nanny; when Constable Jones finds them, Jane apologizes to their parents for worrying them. From hers and Michael's guilty expressions, it isn't the first time they've had this conversation.
• Winifred has the appropriate response to seeing her missing children restored safe and sound: she runs to embrace them, relieved they aren't hurt or lost. George orders her to stop and not make a scene. Ouch.
• The song "Feed the Birds".
  • Doubly so when you learn that "Feed the Birds" was Walt Disney's favorite song. He would frequently ask The Sherman Brothers to play it for him after their Friday afternoon strategy sessions. They played it at his funeral. And even after he died they would go to his empty office on a Friday afternoon and play it for him. Y'all can go cry now.
  • And triply so when you learn, years later, that the bird lady was played by Jane Darwell, already no spring chicken when she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath a quarter of a century earlier. It was her last film role.
    • Quadruply so when you learn that Darwell was one of Disney's favorite actresses, and he personally traveled to her retirement home to request that she be in the movie. That's saying something.
  • What makes it worse is when Mr. Banks goes past the cathedral as he makes his way to getting fired; a Dark Reprise (or perhaps regular reprise, since it sounded dark anyway) swells as he looks at the utterly empty steps of the cathedral, then up into the air.
    • In fact, the entire sequence of George leaving the Banks' family home as he heads down the dark, lonely streets up to the cathedral scene is easily the biggest tearjerker in the entire film. Humbled and broken, and now fully aware of his shortcomings as a father, the once proud Mr. Banks somberly prepares to face judgment from his superiors and the all-likelihood of losing that financially secured life he had worked so hard for his family up to this point. "Uncomplaining, alone, and silent," just as Bert described, right until the bitter end.
    • The absence of the bird lady heavily implies that she passed away, and that by denying his children the chance to give their money to her and telling them to ignore her, they'll never be able to show the woman kindness ever again. In other words, not only did Mr. Banks take his children for granted, but life itself. Of all his actions in life, this is one that’s impossible to make up for; even Mr. Banks himself feels extremely remorseful for this.
• Ultimately, the story of Mr. Banks. He's a cold and selfish misogynist looking to be remembered in the world of banking. His life is turned upside down by the introduction of Mary Poppins, who brings fun to his family until he realizes what a failure in life he's been. He is ridiculed before his peers, sacked from his job, and then reconciles with his family, intending to spend more time with his children. And he recovers his job at the end!
• Near the end, when Bert is describing George Banks's attitude towards his work and family (for emphasis, to a slow melancholy version of "The Life I Lead", where Mr. Banks had described much the same thing near the start of the film):
  You're a man of 'igh position, esteemed by your peers
  And when your little tykes are cryin', you 'aven't time to dry their tears
  And see them grateful little faces smilin' up at you
  Because their dad, 'e always knows just what to do
  You've got to grind, grind, grind at that grindstone
  Though child'ood slips like sand through a sieve
  And all too soon they've up and grown
  And then they've flown
  And it's too late for you to give...
  Just that... spoonful of sugar to 'elp the medicine go down
  • Mr. Banks opens the song with an equally sad statement to the position in which he's found himself. The whole song, A Man Has Dreams, is pretty depressing.
    A man has dreams of walking with giants.
    To carve his niche in the edifice of time.
    Before the mortar of his zeal has a chance to congeal
    The cup is snatched from his lips. The flame is snuff a-bornint.
    He's brought to wreck and ruin in his prime.
• As Mary Poppins pack her things, the kids are in tears. They both beg her not to leave, even though the wind has changed. As a result, they don't say goodbye to her when she shoos them to see their father. Realistic? Yes. Sobering that you don't properly get to say farewell to someone that changes your life for the better? Also yes.
• Mary Poppins finishes packing for her departure, then watches Jane and Michael go off with their parents without a backwards glance. Just because something is right and correct doesn't automatically make it less sad.
  • However, in Mary Poppins' view: "Practically perfect people never permit sentiment to muddle their thinking."
    • Oh, balderdash. Her umbrella didn't buy that line, and neither should anyone else.
• Michael and Jane run away from the bank and into Bert, who comforts them and he tells them their father loves them, and they say that he doesn't love them at all. Bert explains their father to them, and how no one is there for him, at the end of the day, and how Bert feels sorry for Mr. Banks having a dead end job.
  Bert: You know, begging your pardon, but the one my 'eart goes out to is your father. There he is, in that cold, heartless bank day after day, hammed in by mounds of cold, heartless money. I don't want to see any living thing caged up.
  Jane: Father... in a cage?
  Bert: They makes cages in all sizes and shapes, you know. Bank-shaped, some of 'em, carpets and all.
  Jane: Father's not in trouble. We are.
  Bert: Oh. Sure about that, are you? Look at it this way. You got your mother to look after you, and Mary Poppins, and Constable Jones and me. Who looks after your father? Tell me that. When something terrible happens, what does he do? Fends for himself, he does. Who does he tell about it? No one. Don't blab his troubles at home. He just pushes on at his job, uncomplaining and alone and silent
• Michael apologizes for inadvertently causing the bank riot, and gives his father the tuppence, hoping it'll make everything better. Awwwwww.
  • What makes it better is it does make everything better. A momentary glance is all it takes for George to realize what really matters within his life.
    Michael: (hands over his tuppence to his father) Here, father. You can have the tuppence.
    Jane: Will that make everything all right?
    George: (sadly) Thank you.
• Just a passing remark at the time, but Dawes Jr.'s line about how, when Dawes Sr. laughed himself to death over the "wooden leg" joke, he'd never seen his father happier in his life is really sad when you unpack it. Poor Dawes Sr. had evidently been just as closed-off and distant from his child as George Banks had been. But his grim facade of respectability never cracked enough for him to share even a moment of happiness with his family until Dawes Jr. was, himself, an old man. Sand through a sieve, indeed.
• Most of the above moments, but especially Mr. Banks' walk of shame to the bank, the empty cathedral steps, Bert's sad reprise of "The Life I Lead", and the kids being upset over Mr. Banks being "in a cage", all become even more of a Tear Jerker after viewing Saving Mr. Banks and understanding their significance and meaning to P.L. Travers.

• The end of the Laughing Gas/Visit with Uncle Albert scene when Mary tells the kids it's time to go. It makes poor Uncle Albert and Bert very sad. It turns into a Funny Moment with Bert's bad joke to Albert, and this only makes Albert cry more due to how bad it is, causing Bert to cry himself.
• Happy tears more than sad but these lines from Chim Chim Cher-ee:
  Up where the smoke is all billered and curled
  'Tween pavement and stars is the chimney sweep world
  When there's 'ardly no day
  Nor 'ardly no night
  There's things 'alf in shadow
  And 'alf way in light
  On the roof tops of London
  Coo... what a sight!
  

Stage musical

• Both of Mary Poppins' departures, especially her second at the end of Act 2. After Jane and Michael run home, Mary Poppins meets up with Bert, who has painted her a flower bouquet and presents it to her. Bert and Mary say goodbye to each other, ending with Mary giving Bert a kiss on the cheek. Just before she leaves for good, Mary sings a Dark Reprise of "A Spoonful of Sugar" revealing her true feelings about leaving the Banks family.
  With every job when it's complete
  There is a sense of bittersweet
  The moment when you know the task is done
  Though in your heart, you'd like to stay
  To help things on their way,
  You've always known they must do it alone.
• The reprise of "Being Mrs. Banks," where Mrs. Banks, after being cowed and uncertain for all of the play, reaches out to her husband with courage and love.
  George, dear, I know it hurts your pride, dear,
  But you can't just run and hide, dear
  Why can't you see that I'm here,
  And I am on your side!
  • George's lament that precedes this, "Good for Nothing" (a Dark Reprise of "Cherry Tree Lane") is also a tearjerker:
    Illusions may shatter, but memories stay
    The things that really matter, I lost on the way.
    The sovereign, the master, and long may he reign
    The famous "good for nothing" of Cherry Tree Lane.

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