RAISE HIGH THE ROOF BEAM, NEIGHBORS

In 2018, director Morgan Neville produced a well-received documentary about the late Fred Rogers. Though not nominated for an Academy Award, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? received 80 nods among film festivals, critics associations, and other organizations, winning more than half of them. At a time of failing national leadership, of malicious cruelty and moral turpitude at the highest levels of government, and of political divisiveness among the general public, it makes sense that audiences emphatically embraced the portrait of a kind, compassionate man who employed television for nearly half a century not to divide, bully, or lie to people, but to nurture, teach, and empower children. In examining its subject, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? earned the highest box-office gross of any biographical documentary in movie history.

The November 1998 issue of Esquire magazine — The November 1998 issue of *Esquire* magazine

By contrast, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood takes a different tack in exploring the man who hosted Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood for more than three decades and nearly 900 episodes. Foremost, the protagonist of the film is not Fred Rogers, but the fictional investigative journalist Lloyd Vogel. Inspired by Tom Junod’s 1998 Esquire article, “Can You Say…Hero?”, A Beautiful Day follows the tenacious Vogel as he conducts a series of interviews with Mr. Rogers. Those meetings are liberally interspersed with scenes from the reporter’s muddled private life, and that character actually drives the narrative. Vogel’s professional zeal and personal reticence have begun alienating his wife, particularly in the context of the couple raising their newborn son. Combine that with the reporter’s estranged drunken reprobate of a father who suddenly wants to reconcile, and whom his son wholly rejects, and an overall picture emerges of a man struggling to cope with a difficult childhood and persistent anger issues.

The film actually begins in the way an episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood would. The host enters the set, peels off his jacket in favor of a knitted sweater, and exchanges his dress shoes for sneakers, all while singing the show’s familiar theme song, “Won't You Be My Neighbor?” Tom Hanks does a fine job of embodying Mr. Rogers, bringing both a softness and an attentiveness to his performance. The role does not require much in the way of emotional range, but there is a depth of feeling that Mr. Hanks manages to capture, as well as a confident sense of calm.

Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood — Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers in *A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood*

Just as A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood starts with the show’s opening, it concludes with its closing segment, essentially attempting to construct the film in a manner that would evoke an episode of the series. That conceit doesn’t entirely work, not because of the adult nature of the subject matter—Mr. Rogers frequently addressed complex themes on his show, albeit in simplified ways so that children could understand them—but because of the coarseness of the story contained therein. Chris Cooper effectively portray’s Jerry Vogel, Lloyd’s father, as an aging alcoholic who failed utterly as a father and husband, making it completely understandable that Lloyd has reached adulthood as a cynical, angry man. Matthew Rhys gives a believable performance in the role, although it largely comes off as a narrow, one-note depiction. Susan Kelechi Watson does better playing his wife, Andrea, though the screenplay fails at the outset to establish just why she fell in love with her husband.

Matthew Rhys And Tom Hanks in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood — Matthew Rhys And Tom Hanks in *A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood*

But while the plot of A Beautiful Day concerns itself primarily with Lloyd’s life as it threatens to unravel, it manages to illustrate the spirit of Mr. Rogers’ gifts, almost entirely by reflection. Fred Rogers becomes a presence in Lloyd Vogel’s life by virtue of their reporter-subject interactions, but their relationship grows into far more than that. The two men become friends, and as Tom Junod reveals in “My Friend Mister Rogers,” a recent article appearing in The Atlantic, they stayed in touch until Mr. Rogers’ death in 2003. In the film, the children’s television host has a tremendous effect on the emotional life of Lloyd Vogel, and although Mr. Junod’s troubles evidently diverge greatly from those of his fictional counterpart, the journalist felt—and still feels—a similar influence. The quiet, graceful concern of Fred Rogers suffuses the story from top to bottom.

Cover image of Tom Junod’s article, “My Friend Mister Rogers,” in The Atlantic — Cover image of Tom Junod’s article, “My Friend Mister Rogers,” in *The Atlantic*

Marielle Heller directs A Beautiful Day with a delicate touch, which serves the film well in several key scenes. A lunch out between Lloyd Vogel and Fred Rogers unfolds quietly but powerfully, and a visit by Mr. Rogers to Jerry Vogel’s house toward the end of the story plays out with great poignance. Several sequences don’t entirely work—in addition to the endpaper scenes emulating Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, another leaves a sleeping Lloyd believing that he has become part of the show—but this may be a function of the script as much as one of direction; as written, those portions of the screenplay come with a high degree of difficulty.

Audience expectations of a fuller presence of Mr. Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood may temper their initial enjoyment of the film. But while the focus may not be on him or on the details of his life, it nevertheless does deliver an impression of his gentle reach and the powerful impact he had on others. Further, A Beautiful Day exalts Fred Rogers without beatifying him. Still, the audience will come away knowing about the children’s show host what the Archaic Greek poet Sappho wrote of a bridgegroom, namely that he walked “taller far than a tall man.”