The Pitch: The End of the Tour + Won't You Be My Neighbor
Won't You Be My Neighbor is a documentary I liked very much, although I admit
that it barely stopped short of being a hagiography. Fred Rogers is the most
genuinely nice person to ever be famous. I'm sure some of this was PR, but
there's been over half a century (including nearly 20 years since his death)
for anything bad to come out about him. It's not like he has a powerful estate,
capable of holding things back. If there were skeletons in that closet, someone
would've found them by now. That's what Won't You Be My Neighbor
presents: Fred Rogers was the real deal. The soft-spokenness. The genuine
interest in virtually everyone he met. His simple set of beliefs. It's all
real.
Beautiful Day then poses the question "Can Mr. Rogers'
Neighborhood exist in the real world?". The movie literally starts as
an episode of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood in which Mr. Rogers (Tom Hanks)
introduces the story of the movie. That story is of Esquire reporter Lloyd
Vogel (Matthew Rhys), who gets an assignment to write a "puff piece"
about Fred Rogers for a hero issue of the magazine. Vogel is the kind of
reporter who takes his job seriously, has received great acclaim for his work,
but has also burned everyone he writes about so consistently, that Fred Rogers
is the only person even willing to be interviewed by him. Vogel also has some
unresolved issues with his father which is getting in the way of his ability to
connect with his wife (This Is Us' Susan Kelechi Watson) and newborn
son. Vogel goes to meet Fred Rogers in Pittsburgh and is immediately
suspicious of him, as all cynical people are. Look, the movie is based on an
Esquire article calls "Can You Say...Hero?" so you know what
direction the movie goes in from there.
Like any good experiment though, the point isn't to
go in some unexpected direction. It's to prove the thesis, and that's exactly
what Beautiful Day does. It presents Fred Rogers as a real and
complicated but exceptional person. Most of the work falls on Tom Hanks, who is
more than up to the challenge. Because, the movie doesn't oversell the
humanizing moments. Fred Rogers never unloads on an employee or complains about
a stranger coming up to him on the street. Instead, Hanks makes Fred Rogers
real with pauses and the way he says things. His take on Fred Rogers is a man
who works intensely hard to channel his anger and frustration in productive
ways. Perhaps a 30-year-old Fred Rogers would need a scene in which he stares
dead-eyed at a wall by himself, struggling to contain dark thoughts. However, Beautiful
Day's Fred Rogers is older and more comfortable. He has people working for
him who are protective of him. Most importantly, he's regimented and knows what
he needs to do to be the man he wants to be. It's pretty marvelous work by Tom
Hanks. I worry that people will once again take it for granted how good he is,
just because the casting choice of "America's Dad" to play Mister
Rogers is so obvious.
Rogers is just a supporting character though. Vogel
is the protagonist of the movie. Matthew Rhys is good in the role. I like that
the movie doesn't try to turn Vogel into a true believer of Fred Rogers by the
end. Rather, he seems to come to the conclusion that some people don't need to
be torn down. It's a little strange to see Chris Cooper as Vogel's estranged
father. I'm so used to Cooper in either sage or stern roles.
"Hard-drinking, roguish father" took some getting used to. Susan
Kelechi Watson is good, although I wish there was a little more going on with
her character. She's not a nagging wife, but her role often comes down to
asking Lloyd if he's ready to emotionally invest in their family unit.
As I mentioned, the movie is structured a bit like an
episode of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Director Marielle Heller wisely
doesn't overdo it. She includes the classic intro and closing. It cuts back to
Mr. Rogers hosting only once or twice in the middle. It occasionally presents
things like a segment in the show, such as a brief summary of how a magazine
gets made. The big stylistic flourish though is that instead of establishing
shots of cities or locations from stock footage, they use a giant model of
Pittsburgh and New York City in the style of the model neighborhood Mr.
Rogers' Neighborhood. Describing it sounds too cute by half, but in the
movie it really work. That, mixed with music inspired by the Mr. Rogers' show
give the movie a very gentle feel all-around.
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood has some of the same limitations as other movies of
its ilk (The End of the Tour is the immediate example that comes to
mind). The character it's most interested in is one that it keeps at an arm's
length. It never fully moves past the legend of Mister Rogers. To its credit,
it doesn't feel like a case where his widow was shooting down more
controversial takes. It maybe tries a little too hard to find a deeper meaning
to the whole experience that Lloyd Vogel goes through. Mostly though, this is a
sweet movie that does an excellent job evoking a specific feeling. I'm not sure
where I land on the "Is Mr. Rogers a hero?" debate (if there is one),
but I do believe he was a genuinely decent man. We need more stories about
genuinely decent people.
Verdict: Strongly Recommend
