By Tom Siebert
Jaded journalist Lloyd Vogel
doesn’t “get” Fred Rogers. He thinks the cardigan-clad legend is simply the
“hokey host” of PBS-TV’s long-running “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
After all, only a guileless child
could take seriously the lyrics of the show’s twinkly piano theme, sung by the
always-affable sweater guru himself:
“It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor.
Would you be mine? Could you be mine? Please, won’t you be…my neighbor?”In the inspiring new movie “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” Mr. Vogel, an investigative reporter for Esquire magazine, is miffed because he has been assigned to write a “puff piece,” rather than an exposé, about Mr. Rogers, then a 70-year-old national icon.
“Play nice,” his editor Ellen, played by Christine Lahti, warns him. And even the writer’s wife Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson), cautions, “Please don’t ruin my childhood.”
This innovative, profound film, directed brilliantly in a Mr. Rogers episode format by Marielle Heller, is loosely based on the 1998 Esquire article “Can You Say…Hero?” by Tom Junod, whose cynical outlook on life was positively altered by spending quality time with the Presbyterian minister turned TV star.
It is beautifully fitting that Mr. Rogers is performed by “Mr. Nice,” Tom Hanks, the Jimmy Stewart-esque Everyman character of our times, who has won more than 50 major acting awards in his fabulous 40-year career.
But this amazing movie is less about Mr. Rogers than it is about the fictional but all too human Mr. Vogel, portrayed by Matthew Rhys, who should garner an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
The film opens with the reluctant writer attending his sister Lorraine’s wedding with his wife and their newborn son, Gavin. During the reception, Lloyd starts a bloody fistfight with his estranged father, Jerry, who had abandoned his wife while she was dying of cancer.
Nursing a nose injury, Lloyd travels to KQED-TV in Pittsburgh to interview Fred, who prevaricates when asked pointed questions about his legendary status, seeming to be interested only in the journalist’s obvious resentment toward his dad.
Following that first conversation, Lloyd updates his editor over the phone: “He’s just about the nicest person I’ve ever met. I just don’t know if he’s for real.”
In their next interview in New York City, Fred again evades Lloyd’s questions and instead talks about raising his own two sons, takes out his puppets, and through them tries to cajole the writer into talking about his father.
“Someone has hurt my friend Lloyd,” one puppet says, “and not just on his face. He’s having a hard time forgiving the person who hurt him.”
But the interviewer isn’t ready for Kabuki therapy. He abruptly ends the session and goes home, only to find that Jerry, bitterly but brokenly played by Chris Cooper, and his girlfriend Dorothy had brought dinner for the family. Lloyd demands that his father leave but Jerry suffers a heart attack and is transported to a hospital.
Mr. Vogel then refuses to remain at the hospital with the rest of his family and returns to the Pittsburgh studio to resume his talks with Mr. Rogers. Alone on the set of the show’s Neighborhood of Make-Believe, Lloyd collapses from exhaustion and dreams about his dysfunctional childhood.
He then appears magically in a Mr. Rogers episode about hospitals, wearing rabbit ears, shrinking to the size of the show’s characters King Friday XIII and Daniel the Striped Tiger, and being towered over by Fred and Andrea.
In the final scene of this creative dream sequence, Lloyd visits his dying mother, who encourages him to relinquish his anger towards his father.
Back to reality, Mr. Rogers meets Mr. Vogel at a restaurant, asking him to spend one minute thinking about those who “loved him into being” and reinforces the need to forgive his dad.
Not fully transformed but willing to take the first steps toward reconciliation, Lloyd then visits his now-dying father in the hospital, forgives him, promises Andrea to be a better husband, and even pledges to become a “Mr. Mom” to his son Gavin.
From 1966 until 2001, “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” taught little children about big issues.
When Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.) was shot to death in 1968, the show devoted an entire week to teaching kids the meaning of the word “assassination.”
A year later, Fred and African American actor Francois Collins, who played a police officer on the program, cooled off their bare feet in a small plastic wading pool, taking a quiet stance against segregated public swimming facilities.
Fred Rogers, who passed away in 2003, gave every child laser beam attention and Christ-like love, irrespective of their abilities or disabilities.
Fans of Mr. Rogers will delight in the film’s cameos by his real-life wife Joanne and the actual actor who played Mr. McFeely on the show, David Newell, now 81.
In the movie, Fred softly states, “I think the best thing we can do is to let people know that each one of them is precious.”
And he gently teaches us grown-ups that unconditional kindness can change one’s world.
