OVP: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)

Film: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)
Stars: Tom Hanks, Matthew Rhys, Susan Kelechi Watson, Chris Cooper, Christine Lahti
Director: Marielle Heller
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actor-Tom Hanks)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

We, as a family, were not a household that watched much Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood growing up even though it was very much a show that was still relevant on PBS at the time.  My mother was more prone to allowing my brother & I watch Sesame Street or the Disney Afternoon lineup than she was something like Mr. Rogers, which she found hokey.  As a result, while I understand the sweep of nostalgia that glosses over many of the people who saw A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, it would be something of a copout to claim I felt it in the same way.  My cursory knowledge of the show and its iconography are more through just observing pop culture (of sweater-wearing icons of the 1980's, Fred Rogers has emerged far more favorably than other such figures of the era) than anything.  So I went into Beautiful Day with little grounding in the lore of Mr. Rogers, and instead just wondering if Marielle Heller's hot streak as a director would continue.

(Spoilers Ahead) Despite what you might infer from the trailers, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is not a traditional biopic of the beloved children's entertainer (and bless it for that after a year of uninspired biopics).  Instead, this is the story of Lloyd Vogel (loosely based on journalist Tom Junod), a writer for Esquire who has developed a reputation for writing hatchet jobs for the magazine, and seems consistently angry at the world despite a loving wife (Watson), a successful career, and a newborn son.  He's assigned a profile of Rogers (Hanks) by his editor (Lahti), who seems to insinuate that Lloyd needs to make this work, as he's becoming difficult to employ due to his anger issues.  Once Lloyd meets Mr. Rogers, he tries desperately to find something beyond the sheen of the perfect man that comes into children's homes each week, but instead Rogers wants to focus on Lloyd himself, and why he's so angry at himself & his father (Cooper).  Though reluctant at first, Lloyd eventually opens himself up, and becomes healed by accepting what he can't change, and learning to let go.

The film is kind of a miracle in that Heller is able to deal with a few issues of making a film about Rogers that would otherwise have been difficult for a less-skilled director.  The first is by picking Vogel, an imperfect figure, as her main character rather than Fred himself.  Mr. Rogers, despite countless urban legends about the man, seemed to be a pretty boring figure in his private life.  The film portrays him as dutiful, a perfectionist with a major hand in his productions, but also someone of patience, faith, and gratitude for what he'd been given in life.  As a result, he'd make a pretty difficult protagonist in a picture-who wants to watch a movie about a man who became successful, and then seemingly didn't have any pitfalls afterward?

The second is finding a way to contrast such a man against someone more filled with human foibles like Lloyd (or, well, the audience), and coming away with a message we can carry forward.  Heller's last cinematic duet was Can You Ever Forgive Me?, a movie about two deeply flawed people who found themselves showing their shared humanity with those in the theater who might otherwise have never connected to such figures.  Here we see something the same.  We watch as Lloyd understands that this veneer is not always easy for Fred, and that he is occasionally more at home in a world of "make believe," but that he does what he does to genuinely help people, to put something better out into the world.  It wouldn't work if Hanks wasn't giving an astounding performance, but he is-Hanks has recently been on something of a renaissance as an actor after spending much of the aughts in cash grab projects (the Robert Langdon franchise) and misfires (The Terminal), but this might be his best work yet of that era.  His Fred Rogers is real, not just a figurative cartoon that feels more at home next to Big Bird and Thomas the Tank Engine, but he's also not-he toes the line between someone we wish to achieve and someone we should strive to emulate, but won't ever quite get there.  Complimented by the rest of the cast (though I'll admit to waning interest whenever Fred isn't the focus), his Fred Rogers stands out as an authentic, unique creation, much like Heller's vision for this picture.  In a year where female directors are once again getting shut out from major critical organizations, you have to wonder what it's going to take for Heller to finally get her moment in the spotlight.