A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

“Though the schoolchildren were mostly black and Latino when one considers all races, yet they didn’t get closer to Mister Rogers and ask for his autograph. They only sang.”

If you’ve seen an ad or trailer for Marielle Heller’s “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” perhaps you noticed the scene above. Although I thought this brief clip of the film was a little overblown at first, these words were unearthed from Tom Junod’s paradigmatic profile on Mr. Rogers titled “Can You Say Hero?” This is what the film adaptation of “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” is based on but with one difference, Mr. Rogers is not the main character.

The movie begins like episodes of Mr. Roger’s neighborhood complete with twinkling piano theme music from the show, tiny houses and even Tom Hanks ( who stars as Mr. Rogers) coming home singing while changing his sweater and shoes. Instead it follows Lloyd (Matthew Rhys), a cynical journalist assigned to write an inoffensive puff piece on the beloved children’s TV host for Esquire.

He thinks that it is too good to be true and reluctantly meets with this iconic man dressed in a cardigan which even his wife Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson) pleads with him not to let her down because she does not wish him to uncover some deep dark secret about Fred’s past. But Fred Rogers’ unwaveringly kind mannerisms leave no room for Lloyd’s harden skepticism as he coaxes answers out of him about himself, being a new father, that relationship between him and Jerry his father (Chris Cooper) that he has tried so hard to put behind him but still haunts him all these days later.

This is no mere biography of one man’s life, but rather a testament to how one Mr. Rogers’ could influence many children from the early years and adulthood. His personality may seem simple to some people and this is probably due to his character not being layered in any way other than his person on screen persona.

Whether it’s too good to be true or not and trust me, there are many instances in the movie that feel like so at distinct moments usually that scene can be traced back to an article or an old episode. Others of course are very much fabricated by scripts by Micah Fitzerman Blue and Noah Harpster; however, these manufactured scenes do not seem quite distant from the stories being told. In reality, there seems to be no limit to Roger kindness.

Most of the movie’s best scenes revolve around Lloyd never understanding how someone can always be so kind like that throughout his life. Rhys does a brilliant job playing a man who has been hurt by his past, having closed off certain emotions for survival reasons but this will not work when he interviews Mr. Rogers. Heller’s film creates an emotional journey for him shaped by Mr. Rogers’ philosophy with his profile subject doubling as a therapist. It’s a narrative technique that occasionally puts more focus on developing Hanks character than their shared conversation but also asks what adults can gain from watching Mister Roger show.

Though Hanks doesn’t look exactly like Fred Rogers, he convincingly acts like him even down to mannerisms of the former pastor turned child icon: slowing down speech for soothing cadence; hugging and touching too often as well as walking vulnerably reminding us it isn’t just another character on TV but a person with fears and pain of their own. This is one famous actor embodying one of entertainment’s most compassionate human beings a perfect match made in heaven! Hanks’ energy in the role wonderfully gets at what “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” wants to convey.

After two darker dramedies, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” and “The Diary of a Teenage Girl,” Heller’s instinct to follow a flawed character which compared to Rogers, could probably be any one of us is right on. In conjunction with the cinematographer, Jody Lee Lipes, she balances the well-lit sets of Rogers’ PBS affiliate where he tapes his shows against dark rooms where Lloyd does most of his research on old episodes or ponders advice about his dad from Mr. Rogers.

These scenes are gloomy and isolated but when he is sitting across from Mr. Rogers, it seems that light from the host is almost absorbed by a journalist face as if lighting it up literally; Heller adds references to his show and its new incarnation based on Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood one of his favorite puppets throughout her film like interstitial scenes showing miniaturized New York City and Pittsburgh settings for Lloyd’s travels between both places or Nate Heller score which sounds conversant with other music in the show’s theme song all through its playing time.

It relates back to the book-end-like set-up of the movie in which Hanks as Mr. Rogers addresses the audience directly and introduces his friend, Lloyd just so quickly reminds one of that show a lot of us watched and hits those feelings exactly.

Similarly, while some parts might be too close to home or induce nostalgia as was the case with Morgan Neville’s documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”, it would be fitting to think of “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” as a companion. On one hand, Heller’s film is more about what Rogers did for our culture than about this man with a red sweater and sneakers that documentarians looked at from another angle; he had this uncanny knack for getting through to people who would probably not talk about their feelings so openly without him.

I had read Junod’s article later after watching the show just to clear away my own cynicism, and realize how much of Rogers’ scenes were real-like; including one bright response by Rogers when Lloyd could not believe it: “Look at us I’ve just met you, but I’m investing in who you are and who you will be, and I can’t help it.” Everywhere else on earth in every era has always sucked but there was a time when many of us realized that this wasn’t compulsory. That is why Mr. Rogers still endures.

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