A Neighbourly Film

Few figures in the world of entertainment are as widely beloved in the way that Fred Rogers is. And it seems that in recent times of such hate and division his simple philosophies on love, kindness, and empathy as well as his unique way of teaching them have had a welcome renaissance. Only last year, we had the terrific documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor, and now Can You Ever Forgive Me’s Marielle Heller has brought the late childrens’ host back to life again for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, a very interesting film which casts Mr. Rogers with another universally beloved popular icon, Tom Hanks, thus assuring a movie of the utmost sweetness.

The film is not a biopic, in fact it’s only loosely based on a true story, taking the 1998 Esquire article “Can You Say …Hero?” by Tom Junod and expanding it into a semi-fictional narrative of a journalist here dubbed Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) interviewing Mr. Rogers at a particularly trying time in his personal life when he’s dealing with both a new child and his estranged fathers’ (Chris Cooper) attempts at reconciliation. And in one of Heller’s most inspired choices, this narrative is encased within a framing device of an episode of Mister Rogers Neighborhood. It opens on Rogers entering his set singing the titular song and completing his usual routine, introduces Lloyd via Rogers’ ‘Picture Board’, and every establishing shot is made through the miniscule model set of the neighbourhood or city. The sets are recreated down to the smallest details, which in conjunction with the grainy cinematography and reduced aspect ratio of these scenes really gives the impression you’re watching a 90’s childrens’ programme, and makes Hanks’ appearance as Rogers (a part he grows into over the course of the film) more digestible early on. Heller has described the film as “a Mr. Rogers episode for adults”, and this creative structural context reinforces that uniquely and charmingly.

That’s also the core of what makes the movie work. It is a Mr. Rogers movie, but its’ target audience is unequivocally adults and the issues it’s dealing with are adult issues of parenting, loss, estrangement, reconciling complex feelings, bottling up anger, learning empathy, and forgiveness; the kind of things most of us struggle with to some degree or another in our daily lives. And the fact that there’s so much overlap in these themes and the values Rogers conveyed to children goes to show how important an influence he was. The film is about how those values, articulated in the simplest terms for preschoolers, have worth and power into adulthood, and concern the problems we face as grown-ups, especially those with children of their own to raise. And yet the film isn’t naïve, it doesn’t try to pretend the world is a tamer place than it is, or that confronting such issues is easy, or that earning forgiveness isn’t as important a thing as giving it. But it takes the Mr. Rogers approach of looking at personal problems: “anything mentionable is manageable”, and encourages a healing perspective.

Certainly what I didn’t expect was that these virtues would be illustrated in mystifying, even surrealist ways. The effect Rogers has on Vogel sometimes takes the form of unusual apparitions and dreams, such as one particularly strange sequence related to the Neighbourhood of Make-Believe that manifests literally the feelings at the heart of Vogels’ psyche. Generally, the films’ attitude towards narrative is rather refreshing –these moments of dubious reality are tossed in among the pointed storytelling, the meta-fiction of the film at times implies a degree of overarching subjectivity, nothing is straight-laced. The wholesome veneer that enshrouds the film in its presentation and the personality of the man being homaged allows for these deviations from convention without wholly alienating its audience; and I think Heller was very clever in noticing that.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood spends much more time away from that neighbourhood and in Vogel’s own life than might be expected. He’s the centrepiece of the film, and Rhys does a pretty good job expressing his cynicism and emotional trauma. He’s not perhaps allowed to go as far with the characters’ demons as might be allowed by the film being in such proximity to Mr. Rogers; and indeed it’s a minor disappointment that the conflict between him and his father is relatively simple and lacking in the nuance and deeper contexts that exist in most real broken families. Susan Kelechi Watson lends a believable desire for outreach to Vogel’s wife, and Cooper of course is apt as the dejected father. But the movie was always going to live or die on Tom Hanks as Rogers. And honestly it was a bit of an odd casting choice in terms of authenticity. Hanks neither looks nor sounds like Rogers, which is evident from his earliest appearance where he has the right cadence, but it’s not what you’d recognize from the show. It doesn’t take long for him to embody the spirit of the character though, both in his sometimes frustrating idiosyncrasies and his genuinely inspired insights. Like the last time he played an icon of childrens’ entertainment (Walt Disney in Saving Mr. Banks), it’s just the right amount of distance to allow for a freer portrayal. Of course, unsurprisingly he has that lovable charm in spades. And twenty-five years after Forrest Gump, filmmakers are still inserting Hanks into old television footage.

If you’re looking for a portrait of who Mr. Rogers was, the power of his message, and a loving tribute to his legacy, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is the better film for that. But A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is a good companion piece, presenting the man from an outside perspective and showcasing the worth of his philosophies in action. Heller once more proves herself a filmmaker with a bright future in her graceful execution of the films’ wilder choices, and if nothing else, the movie is a bastion of positivity in a time when that’s sorely needed in both cinema and everyday life.

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