Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood, A

Synopsis: When an award-winning journalist, Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) working for Esquire magazine begrudgingly accepts an assignment to write an profile piece on children’s television icon Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks), his life is transformed.

Based on a 1998 Esquire article “Can You Say…Hero?” by award-winning journalist Tom Junod, here re-named Lloyd Vogel, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is a “puff piece” (which is what Vogel calls the assignment his editor gives him) that cleverly plays with its material, switching back and forth between the childish and the adult as it explores the real life phenomenon of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood which ran on American television beginning in 1988 and ending in 2001 shortly before Rogers' death.

Unlike the better-known Sesame Street and our own Play School, Fred Rogers’ show addressed subjects such as sibling rivalry, bullying, divorce and death within the format of a program for pre-schoolers (although the film does not mention it, presumably to broaden its appeal, Rogers was a Presbyterian minister so this was, and I’m not being cynical, effectively an early intervention strategy in the business of saving souls).

Re-creations of the show are marvellous (you can compare them with Youtube clips) from the miniaturised cityscapes based on Mr Rogers’ neighbourhood set, complete with moving trams and arriving and departing aeroplanes to Mr Rogers singing the show’s theme song “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” as he puts on his zippered cardigan and changes his street shoes for sneakers. Needless to say Hanks is perfect in the role and the other nominees for the 2020 Best Supporting Actor Oscar might as well stay home.

All this is seen from the perspective of Vogel who not only is initially set on a career-typical excoriation of Mr. Rogers’ squeaky clean, super nice guy television image but who is concurrently having to deal with his father, Jerry (Chris Cooper) who abandoned him, his sister and his dying mother many years earlier and who is now trying to implement a rapprochement which Vogel steadfastly refuses. The film is the story of how Mr Rogers' simple unwavering commitment to forgiveness, acceptance and love gradually turns Vogel around.

Despite the feel-good template that essentially underlies the film, director Marielle Heller never plays sentimental (well, a scene in which travellers on a New York City subway break into a spontaneous rendition of the show’s theme song is a little much) and the film makes it clear that Mr Rogers’ serenity is not that of Forrest Gump or Peter Seller’s Chance in Being There (1979) but a conscious choice of a man who has committed his life to spiritual upliftment.

If that is a message much needed in America today it also has resonances for all our lives. Choose to see A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood. You may be pleasantly surprised

FYI:  For those interested there is a 2018 documentary on Rogers called Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

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