A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood

Directed By: Marielle Heller Written By: Micah Fitzerman-Blue & Noah Harpster (based on the article Can You Say…Hero by Tom JunodStarring: Matthew Rhys, Tom Hanks, Susan Kelechi Watson, Chris Cooper

“How does it feel to be married to a saint?” asks Lloyd Vogel, a hard-bitten writer for Esquire magazine. He’s speaking to Joanne Rogers, wife of Presbyterian minister come beloved children’s television host Fred Rogers, who gently contests the question. “I’m not fond of that term” she says. “If you think of him as a saint, then his way of being is unattainable.” Kindness, we’re told, takes work, and Fred Rogers is simply willing to put that work in.

The trouble is, at least from a dramatic outlook, Fred Rogers really is a saint. Marielle Heller’s marks the second film in as many years to document the earnest, everyday man heroics of Mr Fred Rogers, a sibling film of sorts to Morgan Neville’s 2018 documentary However, where Neville’s film sought to simply celebrate the goodness of Rogers and reaffirm the prescience of the values he embodied, Heller’s film seeks to transplant Rogers into a semi-fictionalised Hollywood melodrama, terrain to which one can’t help but feel he simply doesn’t belong. Sure Rogers has a temper, and his duty as proxy father to all America’s children placed a strain on the relationship he had with his own, but these dramas never got the better of him, and to suggest they might have would be a mighty and dishonest contrivance. Instead Rogers banished his hardships benevolently, through swimming and reading scripture and hammering the bass register of a piano. He’s a dramatic dead-end, which is why , written by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster, can only use Rogers as a secondary character, isolating and reshaping his kindness into a tool for the development of another character within an altogether more conventional and forgettable drama.

That character is the aforementioned Lloyd Vogel (played by Matthew Rhys,) a gifted journalist with a penchant for burning his professional bridges. Lloyd’s M.O is to detect and extrapolate upon the worst qualities of his interviewees, making him a challenging sell for his editor as she hunts for would-be subjects. It’s a deep-seated cynicism towards all people instilled in Lloyd by his adulterating, heavy drinking father Jerry (Chris Cooper,) who abandoned the Vogel family and left the children to pick up the pieces in the wake of their mother’s fatal illness.

Mr Rogers is the subject Lloyd needs then. Paired with the star as part of a series of articles Esquire is publishing on heroes (“400 words. Play nice” are Lloyd’s instructions,) Rogers is initially one of the few willing to brace Lloyd’s testiness, and is later on devoted to helping Lloyd out of his rut.

Vogel is loosely based on Tom Junod, who’s Esquire article in turn serves as the film’s inspiration. But whilst one could never doubt the enrichment that Rogers offered Junod’s life in reality, the dramatic arc that Junod’s surrogate is straddled with smacks of trite and true Hollywood formula. Lloyd’s wounds of frayed familial relations — replete with estranged father, deceased mother, a bust up at a wedding and an innocent well-to-do wife caught in the crosshairs of it all — is nigglingly basic.

There’s a geniality to the whole thing which ensures the film is hate-proof however. Heller’s evocation of the Rogers spirit (kind and emotionally intelligent) is irresistible. Heller does her best to inject verve into the film where possible too. Whimsical and peculiar flourishes are drip-fed throughout, where playful models of bridge bound cars and aeroplanes are used to signal transitions between spaces, and Lloyd is frequently and surreally transplanted into the Pittsburgian set of Rogers’ show, where he finds himself interacting with oversized cast members and Rogers’ puppets, as though Lloyd had somehow become a character in the show.

That peculiarity nicely compliments the personality of Rogers himself, whose kindness harbours an intensity which might initially register as suspicious for the un-ingratiated. Rogers is for real though, and the performance behind the character is equally genuine, put forth with all of the signature colour, sincerity and everyday man splendour by Tom Hanks that has rendered his own presence a cherished one in movies. An inevitable casting choice – despite his notably more extroverted persona than that of his character – it’s hard to imagine any other actor so earnestly capturing the sense of goodness that Rogers typified. It’s an unsuspectingly physical performance too. With his glowing cardigans, bushy eyebrows and patted down silver hair, there’s a wholesome grandfather quality to the character which radiates. Hanks’ speech becomes key, itself a miniature portrait of Rogers’ personality. Hanks doesn’t bother to imitate Rogers’ tone, but his rhythm and cadence are revealing. Disarmingly soft and shrewdly deliberate; he’s warm, but Rogers always seemed to be at work, excavating with caution the troubles of whomever he spoke to. Seeing him in action, one just wishes the story did more to meet Rogers on his own unique level.

Instead what we get is an overly familiar drama that might have had its beats plucked from some filmic conveyor belt. It’s a narrative, inoffensive and workmanlike thought it is, which means we can never really lose ourselves in the film’s bubbling sense of fantasy, and what might have been something indelible has slipped through the cracks. It’s a film of obvious charm and merit, but I can’t help but feel we’ve settled for something far more generic than we need’ve.

Rating

2.5/4