A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood | Little White Lies

A Beau­ti­ful Day in the Neighborhood

29 Jan 2020 / Released: 31 Jan 2020

Words by Hannah Strong

Directed by Marielle Heller

Starring Chris Cooper, Matthew Rhys, and Tom Hanks

A middle-aged man in glasses and a red tie sitting with a plush toy.
A middle-aged man in glasses and a red tie sitting with a plush toy.
4

Anticipation.

Hanks as Mr Rogers seems like peak wholesome content.

4

Enjoyment.

A sweet, heartfelt little adventure.

3

In Retrospect.

Charming, although a tad more conventional than Heller’s previous work.

Tom Han­ks is per­fect­ly cast as the late Fred Rogers, America’s favourite neighbour.

Is there any­one else on the plan­et who could play the incom­pa­ra­ble Fred Rogers besides Tom Han­ks? There’s not much of a phys­i­cal resem­blance, yet the two share some­thing more sig­nif­i­cant: a place in the hearts of Amer­i­cans from all walks of life.

Chil­dren raised on the tele­vi­sion show Mr Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood were taught the val­ue of human kind­ness and self-expres­sion, as demon­strat­ed so elo­quent­ly in Mor­gan Neville’s 2018 doc­u­men­tary Won’t You Be My Neigh­bor?. He touched the lives of count­less indi­vid­u­als, and can be seen as a true force for good in a world of increas­ing instability.

Han­ks, be it as Woody the Cow­boy or Josh Baskin or Sul­ly Sul­len­berg­er, is a sim­i­lar sort of specif­i­cal­ly-Amer­i­can hero. He game­ly josh­es around on Sat­ur­day Night Live, while main­tain­ing a mod­est but charm­ing inter­net pres­ence. He’s benev­o­lent and beloved, just like Rogers.

Marielle Heller’s A Beau­ti­ful Day in the Neigh­bor­hood has been billed as a Fred Rogers biopic, but real­ly it’s about Tom Jun­od. In 1998, the writer was com­mis­sioned by Esquire to write a short pro­file of Rogers for their Heroes’ issue. After spend­ing time with him, Jun­od turned in a 10,000 word essay.

In Heller’s fic­tion­alised account of Junod’s meet­ings with Rogers, Matthew Rhys plays a stand-in named Lloyd Vogel. An inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist by trade, he’s unen­thu­si­as­tic about the prospect of meet­ing Rogers, as well as bat­tling his own per­son­al demons fol­low­ing the return of his estranged father Jer­ry (Chris Coop­er, slight­ly sauced and per­sis­tent in the face of his son’s rejections).

Just as Rogers taught count­less chil­dren the impor­tance of han­dling emo­tions in a healthy way, so he teach­es the wound­ed Lloyd, who is furi­ous and heart­bro­ken at the same time. He strug­gles to process his child­hood trau­ma which is com­pound­ed by the fact he has recent­ly become a father him­self. Ini­tial­ly he resists Rogers’ attempts to reach out to him.

Though you may not think it from the film’s mar­ket­ing cam­paign, Rogers is in fact a sup­port­ing play­er in Lloyd’s sto­ry (and Han­ks like­ly a shoo-in for the Sup­port­ing Oscar in 2020). Per­haps this is the only way to real­ly make a film about Fred Rogers – by mak­ing it about the peo­ple whose lives he touched.

As in 2015’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl and 2018’s Can You Ever For­give Me?, Heller brings her usu­al wit and play­ful­ness to pro­ceed­ings, side-step­ping mawk­ish sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty in favour of mat­ter-of-fact prag­ma­tism. It does feel a lit­tle lighter in tone, and as cosy as it is the film is less dar­ing than Heller’s pre­vi­ous work. Sure­ly there’s no need to fur­ther canon­ise Fred Rogers – his mag­ic was a lack of fuss, a soft voice and an infi­nite sup­ply of patience.

His curios­i­ty about the world – but more impor­tant­ly, the peo­ple in it and soci­ety at large – feels like it could be the pri­ma­ry inspi­ra­tion for Han­ks’ per­for­mance, and rather than over­ly con­cern­ing him­self with achiev­ing an uncan­ny like­ness, this is more like a can­ny reimag­in­ing. No one can be Mr Rogers, but at the same time, every­one can. All it takes is a lit­tle kind­ness to your­self, and a lot of kind­ness towards others.

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