Mark Reviews Movies: A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 21, 2019

"It's not really about Mr. Rogers," the writer's wife says of her husband's magazine article, which was only supposed to be a several-hundred-word profile but has transformed into thousands of words. The same could be said of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, a film that's less about the children's television host than it is about the writer, who definitely could stand to learn a thing or three from the cardigan-clad man.

One of the story's strange omissions is that we never learn if Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) ever watched "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood," but we can assume that, if he did, the show didn't make the intended impact. Lloyd knows who Mr. Rogers is, of course, because it's 1998, and by that time, the program had been a staple of households with children for three decades.

His wife Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson), who recently gave birth to the couple's first child, definitely knows about Mr. Rogers. "Don't ruin my childhood," she warns Lloyd, who has developed a bad reputation as a writer for Esquire, picking apart his interview subjects until there's barely anything good about them remaining.

That might be how Lloyd first approaches his new subject, who's going to be profiled as one of America's heroes in an upcoming issue. Before we learn anything about the film's version of Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks, naturally), we learn quite a bit about Lloyd. He's angry, resentful, insecure, uncertain, and a bit of an emotional mess, even though he's the last person who would admit to such a characteristic. That last part, more than anything else, is the problem.

It's not entirely accurate to say that we learn about Lloyd first. We do, in terms of seeing him in his personal life and at work, while also hearing about the decades of pain that have come to define him. In Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster's screenplay (loosely based on an article by Tom Junod), our first introduction, though, is to Fred, entering his television house, as the film reminds us of the program's virtues—its patience, its softness, its compassion, its willingness to address issues that leave a lot of parents uncomfortable.

Here, using the same sets and even the same cameras, director Marielle Heller establishes the film as something of a special episode of the old show. Mr. Rogers enters, sings, changes into his comfortable clothes and shoes, and proceeds to guide us through Lloyd's troubled life. Even the film's transitional and establishing shots are models—just as the neighborhood was in the original show.

There's something inherently comforting to this approach, and it's sure to be even for those like Lloyd, who either didn't watch the show growing up or have since dismissed it as some kind of cheesy, sappy relic. Hanks, of course, fits right into the role almost immediately, although the real depth of his performance comes later, when we see Fred, not Mr. Rogers, doing some of the same evasive maneuvers at which Lloyd has become so adept. Rather mournfully, a few scenes, especially the film's final one, suggest that the man who helped so many comprehend and deal with their feelings might never have come to terms with his own.

As for Lloyd, he has spent a long time avoiding the pain of his mother's death at a young age and the way that his father Jerry (Chris Cooper) abandoned the family during the mother's illness. The two are reunited at the wedding of Lloyd's sister (played by Tammy Blanchard), and after some awkward encounters, Lloyd punches his dad and ends up with a black eye of his own for the violent disruption.

On that set in Pittsburgh, as we're learning about and seeing Lloyd's life, Mr. Rogers sets up the lesson: It's fine for people to get angry, because people do, but it's what we choose to do with that anger that matters. There's also a lesson about forgiveness to learn and how, paradoxically, it can be hardest to forgive the people we love.

Such lessons were a staple of the real Rogers' show, and as Lloyd interviews Fred on set and around the cities of Pittsburgh and New York, he recites his philosophy for the show's purpose—perhaps for the hundredth or thousandth time, for all we know, but without any sense of irritation or boredom to be talking about it. Adults often forget what it was like to be a child—how confusing and how painful it could be. Kids need assurance—to know that things will be okay and that have intrinsic value as a person.

Here, though, it's an adult who needs such lessons, and Heller's decision to mold this sad, often emotionally wrought narrative within the format (the actual one for certain sections and on a thematic level) of the original show is simple, yes, but also unabashedly, affectingly hopeful. Maybe the seemingly most difficult problems of one's self-worth and relationships can be resolved with such fundamental, easy-to-comprehend lessons.

There's an especially potent moment, in which Lloyd and Fred are talking in a restaurant, and the TV host asks his interviewer to take a minute to recall the people who loved him into being. The film itself—the soundtrack, the dialogue, and even the extras in the restaurant—comes to a stop, too, and we just take in the pure silence. As Fred looks directly into the camera, we realize this minute of reflection isn't just for these characters. In that moment, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood transcends biography and lesson-learning, capturing the spirit of a man who liked people so much that he wanted them to like themselves.

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