A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
starring Tom Hanks, Matthew Rhys, Susan Kelechi Watson and Chris Cooper
written by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster
directed by Marielle Heller
Rating: ♦♦♦♦♦
I watched this on a 13-hour flight back to Tokyo from Toronto, aboard a Boeing 777-300, on Tuesday, March 17, 2020.
Based on the November 1998 Esquire magazine essay “Can You Say … Hero?” by Tom Junod, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is a wonderful biopic of famous U.S. children’s television icon Fred Rogers (1928 - 2003). Tom Junod is fictionalized as the character Lloyd Vogel (Rhys), a journalist for Esquire who is assigned to profile television icon Fred Rogers (Hanks). I never liked Mr. Rogers when I was a child, but he was, and still is beloved by millions. I liked Tom Hank’s portrayal of Mr. Rogers better than I liked Mr. Rogers himself.
Tom Junod/Lloyd Vogel had a fierce reputation as an aggressive, cynical iconoclast. People didn’t like him. Then, against his wishes, he was assigned to interview the lovable, gentle Fred Rogers. Vogel approached the TV star prepared to tear him down and expose supposed hypocrisies and hidden dirt, but instead discovered that Fred Rogers was the real deal.
We see Vogel visiting Mr. Rogers in his Philadelphia studio during taping and get to see him do his thing - with props, with puppets, with music and with other show characters, with his famous red cardigan and sneakers. Vogel is going through some tough times in his personal life - his estranged father who is dying of cancer (Chris Cooper) wants to reconnect - and his encounter with Mr. Rogers was sort of like an epiphany for him - I mean, a moment of sudden revelation and insight.
Mr. Roger’s is subversive in that he quietly enters his viewers’ lives and subtly changes them by his philosophy of love, understanding and communication and by the example of his own life. But he was subversive in a good way.