A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: We Were All Children Once

Prior to watching A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, I had seen the trailer about twenty times in the movie theater. Usually, I don't pay attention to trailers I've seen before, or I get annoyed about having to watch one for the umpteenth time. But every time the trailer for this movie came on, I would perk right up, and without fail, it would make me a little teary-eyed and wistful. When Mr. Rogers would talk about dealing with your feelings by playing all the lowest notes of a piano at once and go "Bong!" while the music swelled to a crescendo, my heart would soar. It never got old. Therefore, I couldn't wait to see this movie. And while it wasn't exactly what I had expected, I still came away from it feeling like there will never be anyone in the world quite like Mr. Rogers.

Tom Hanks plays Fred Rogers, the children's television show host whose sole aim in life was to teach children how to handle the world around them and process their feelings in healthy ways. He was a brilliant man (you can watch the marvelous documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor? to see him in action) and Tom Hanks' portrayal certainly does him justice. Hanks disappears into the role, capturing Mr. Rogers' slow cadence and very deliberate, methodical way of speaking, always carefully choosing his words and simply overflowing with compassion for his fellow humans and enthusiasm for the everyday wonders of the world. However, this movie focuses less on the Mr. Rogers we're used to, the one who dealt with children. Instead, writers Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster have adapted a 1998 Esquire article by Tom Junod who did a celebrity profile of Fred Rogers entitled, "Can You Say...Hero?" As such, the movie focuses more on the character of Lloyd Vogel (played by the excellent Matthew Rhys), the journalist who has been forced to write a "puff piece" on Fred Rogers and thinks this is all a waste of his time. Of course, it is not.

I wasn't sure how I felt about the movie taking this tangent - the trailer was far more centered on Mr. Rogers, while the movie spends a lot more time on Lloyd and the family drama that has led him to be a somewhat bitter and cynical soul. But it eventually won me over. With Marielle Heller's deft direction, we see how Mr. Rogers' gentle but wise teachings were not just something for children to learn but applied universally to us all. It's so easy to watch an episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and dismiss the puppets and cardigans and assorted pageantry as being "kids stuff." But there is nothing childish about the underlying kindness and profound psychological wisdom that is earnestly being dispensed. At one point in the film, Mr. Rogers talks about death; he says that people don't like to talk about it, but "anything mentionable is manageable." It's a valuable reminder that you cannot manage your feelings until you talk about them. But he was also a man who took pleasure in silence and like the documentary, this movie features his common request for people to take a minute of silence "to think about all the people who loved you into being." The movie goes completely silent during this minute, and you would have to have a heart of stone to not immediately start thinking of those people in your life and tear up. 

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is a wonderful movie about a wonderful man. Most importantly, it also humanizes Fred Rogers a bit more than the documentary did - there's a brief exchange where Lloyd is talking to Joanne, Mr. Rogers' wife, and she quickly disabuses him of the notion that her husband is a saint. She talks about how hard he works to keep his emotions in check and that he is a human being just like anyone else. There's also an exchange between Mr. Rogers and Lloyd where he admits that he has had difficulties raising his two sons, who often didn't want to acknowledge that their father was Mr. Rogers. The final scenes of the movie feature an evocative moment to remind us that while he certainly was one of the best the human race had to offer, it wasn't something that came to him effortlessly. All of the tips and tricks he tried to share with the rest of us were things he used himself. I left this movie still thinking Mr. Rogers was one of the greatest men who ever lived, but I also left it thinking that maybe, if I play all the lowest notes on the piano, I too can learn how to be a good neighbor.