A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is not the movies you think it is. If you want a story of the life of beloved children’s entertainer Mr. Rogers go see the documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor. This is not his story. It is the story of another man whose life was touched by his brief interaction with Mr. Fred Rogers, and why Mr. Rogers is the hero we all need at this time.

Based on the writings of Esquire writer Lloyd Vogel who interviewed Mr. Rogers for his magazine’s feature a writer who had been famous for writing dark exposés and upon meeting Mr. Rogers goes through a major life change. We watch as he is transformed just through having a relationship with a man who is like no one he has ever met before, perhaps no one we will see the likes of again.

Tom Hanks plays Rogers as an enigma, an otherworldly light whose very presence is transformative. It is like he is goodness personified. Vogel’s attempts to pin him down to the real world are met with loving resilience. He isn’t normal in any sense of the world. In fact if we hadn’t all grown up watching him on TV we might say his character was unbelievable but yet he is so familiar that we can understand what Vogel is going through.

I am not sure the film gives. Any insights into Fred Rogers the human being. There is a moment he talks about parenting his children where we see that he too suffers pain and frustration but his capability for selflessness, forgiveness, and his complete embracing of love in a way that feels almost unreal, takes him beyond that again. This film’s Rogers is a saint. Director Heller frames her tale as an episode of his show, just unreal so we are safely in a fictional world but soothing and reassuring enough for us to take on the real world.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood captures what it was for Vogel about meeting Rogers which helped him grow and shares that piece with al of us so perhaps we can remember a bit of what it was like to be a child, and to watch him, and feel like he was talking directly to us and affirming who we are exactly as we are.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Starring: Tom Hanks, Matthew Rhys, Chris Cooper
Director: Marielle Heller
Writers: Micah Fitzerman-Blue, Noah Harpster