A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Marielle Heller's A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) labors mightily to avoid cloying sentimentality and, in fact, succeeds in this endeavor for about two-thirds of its modest length.  The last twenty minutes of the film doesn't tell us anything we don't already know and seems to me wholly predictable -- this is unfortunate because the most of the movie is pretty good.  As everyone knows, Tom Hanks plays Fred Rogers, the host of a long-running public television show for small children.  Hanks does a good job until Rogers' sheer saintliness drowns him in bathos.  He's very good when portraying how strange Rogers must have been, how unworldly, and, even, irritating.  But as the film's messages proliferate (all of them good I hasten to observe), the film loses its way, slipping into a generic story of man's redemption.  (There's a nice touch at the end:  Hanks as Rogers' says that he deals with anger by pounding out low chords on his piano.  After finishing the day's shoot, Rogers plays the piano on the set and, suddenly, unexpectedly beats out some scary thunderous chords in the instrument's low register before returning the sweetly placid melody that he was otherwise doodling on the keys.) 

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is loosely based on an Esquire magazine article written by a journalist named Tom Junod.  As it happens, Junod's essay about Fred Rogers ultimately evolves into his redemption story, a narrative about how interaction with the holy man saved his life.  In the film, Junod is named Lloyd Vogel.  Vogel is a hard-driving investigative journalist whose "gotcha" detective work seems to arise from his rage at his own father's betrayal of his dying mother and his sister.  This anger has inspired Vogel to ferret out evil-doing in others and his cynicism about human motivations makes him good at this work.  Vogel is married, has a nice, forgiving wife, and an infant son.  There is the slightest hint that Vogel's journalistic bag of tricks has become a little annoying and, even, rote -- he has, perhaps, lost his edge.  His editor assigns him a 400 word caption on Fred Rogers  for an Esquire heroes edition and, after a calamitous wedding in which he punches his own father, Jerry (played by a haggard grey-faced Chris Cooper), Vogel, still hungover with rage, goes to Pittsburgh to interview the children's TV host.  Rogers takes an interest in Vogel, perceiving that he is wounded, but essentially a good man.  Ultimately, Rogers turns the tables on Vogel, interviewing him in his persistent, wheedling way and the journalist admits the source of his grief and anger.  Vogel still can't reconcile with his father, but, when the old man collapses, he seems to hallucinate and travels to Pittsburgh where he has collapses on the floor of the neighborhood TV set.  Nursed back to health by Rogers, he returns to New York City, reconciles with his father, and, at last, achieves some degree of peace.  Rogers comes to the bedside of Vogel's dying father and comforts everyone with his simple goodness.  The  magazine story about Mr. Rogers is a huge success and Vogel is praised by all; he commits to his wife that he will take time off work to parent their baby boy and all is well in the neighborhood. 

The film is an odd-couple buddy movie a bit on the order of Green Room, although here all the learning, counsel, and advice goes one way -- Rogers dispenses platitudes to Vogel and the long, uncomfortable pauses in their conversations urge the journalist to explore his own anger and the sources of his bitterness.  In the end, the film is too easy by half.  Not only is Vogel redeemed to be a better man, but his marriage is saved, his own relationship with his baby son seems put on a firm, loving footing, and he is rewarded by immense success in the world -- everyone loves his article about Mr. Rogers and, no doubt, he  will be richly compensated for the life-saving counsel administered to him by the saintly TV host.  In other words, Vogel's goodness has no cost at all -- it is all beneficial, there is not even a hint of a downside in his interactions with his new friend, Fred Rogers.  Vogel is never confronted with any conflict.  All he has to do is follow the counsel of Mr. Rogers and he will become a good man, and by doing good he will do well.  In fact, I assume goodness comes at a price and that some of the people who knew Fred Rogers in real life either detested him or found his otherworldly goodness too virtuous to be tolerated.  That said, the movie is excellently made, for 2/3rds of its length, charming and, even, faintly surprising and compared with most garbage that Hollywood produces (superhero movies and the like) well worth watching.  Hanks is fine and the picture is imaginatively constructed -- it plays out as an episode in the neighborhood with Mr. Rogers introducing Lloyd Vogel (we first see him with his face cut and swollen from fisticuffs with his father) as someone who will become our new friend for the duration of the film.  All transitions are managed with tiny miniature sets that simulate the neighborhood shown in the TV shows opening scenes -- these effects are charming and humorous, something that is welcome because the movie is resolutely serious, grave, and without any real comic relief.

Here are some things I learned during my trip to Mr. Rogers' neighborhood:

1.  People who are mad are acting out of sorrow or grief or pain;
2.  Always remember what is is like to be as vulnerable and fearful and curious and joyful as a child;
3.  Interact with children not on the basis of what we hope they will become but as they are now;
4.  Spend one minute a day silently remembering "those who loved us into being";
5.  Everything human is mentionable; everything mentionable is manageable;
6.  Pray for people using their names.

This is all good advice and I'm glad that the movie showed me these things.