Mr Who? Discovering Mr Rogers Through A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Growing up in England, I never saw Mr Rogers on TV and didn’t really knew who he was. From watching American TV and cartoons, I had an idea that there was a man called Mr Rogers who was softly spoken, wore cardigans, and lived in a house but other than that the man remained a mystery.

Older, I was aware of him more via spoofs like Eddie Murphy’s Mr Robinson character on Saturday Night Live and revisionist takes like Jim Carrey’s Kidding.

When A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood came out, I actually didn’t expect it to be released in Australia as, much like in England, Mr Rogers has no cultural footprint here. After all, Australia didn’t get the first John Wick movie in theatres, how could we get a movie about a children’s entertainer none of us knew about?

The short answer is the Academy Awards. With the movie getting a nomination for Tom Hank’s performance, the movie is now appearing in a few arty cinemas Down Under. I managed to win two tickets to it so I thought, even with my lack of knowledge, I should go check it out and see if the movie worked without that built-in nostalgia for the TV show Fred Rogers made.

The Movie

I recently finished watching the first season of Jim Carrey’s Kidding. The show has Carrey playing a Mr Rogers-type children’s show presenter who has essentially raised America’s children with music, puppets, life lessons, and an open heart. Of course, off-camera his life is a mess and all of the caring, giving, and loving exhibited by the show and the people who make it is a lie hiding darkness and anger.

The show is fine and a lot of the watchability comes from Carrey’s charm and Michel Gondry’s visuals. However, it is such a modern take to see Mr Rogers, a man known for his genuine caring and loving nature, and assume there must be intense darkness and anguish behind it all. 21^st Century cynicism can’t let us believe that a good person actually exists in this cesspool of a world because if good people exist, why aren’t they us? And how do they do it?

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood doesn’t offer easy answers to these questions. It very smartly moves the focus away from Fred Rogers to focus on Lloyd Vogel, a magazine journalist sent to Rogers to write a 400-word puff piece about heroes. Vogel is a new father with a contentious relationship with his own dad, who has reappeared in his life right as Vogel meets Rogers.

The movie doesn’t keep Rogers at arm’s length but it doesn’t seek to dive into his private life either. He is a presence throughout and director Marielle Heller uses his show as a framing device as though the whole movie is an episode of Mr Roger’s Neighborhood about Vogel and his feelings. However, Vogel is the main character and Matthew Rhys is great as the young man fighting valiantly to be a good man despite a deep well of anger inside him that he can’t deal with.

Of course, the main attraction here is Tom Hanks as Mr Rogers. It’s basically America’s dad playing America’s other dad. Hanks doesn’t give a note-perfect impression of Rogers, which I know because after watching the movie I got on YouTube and watched clipped of Rogers. But what Hanks does do is he takes the basic ideas of Rogers and creates a version of him. His Rogers is soft-spoken, patient, slow to answer questions, constantly reflective, and kind down to the marrow of his bones. This isn’t like Jamie Foxx’s turn as Ray Charles (which was essentially channelling the musician’s spirit into a performance), it’s more as though Hanks is interpreting Rogers to get the ideas across without getting lost in quirks and tics e.g. Gary Oldman’s shouty, fat-suited Churchill.

And that is probably why Hanks didn’t win the Oscar. Maybe if he had slathered himself in make-up, drastically altered his voice, and imitated every single mannerism of Fred Rogers he would be more in contention but as we all know the Best Acting Oscars tend to stand more for the Most Acting

My Experience

The tickets I won to see the movie were for a 10:30 am screening on a Sunday. My wife and I had nothing to do so she accompanied me with even less knowledge of who Mr Rogers was, and the pair of us went into the movie with the idea it would be like watching a sequel to a movie we hadn’t seen.

At the same time as we were going to see the movie, I was experiencing something I would later learn is called tachyphylaxis. This is when a medication or drug uses its effectiveness and, in medical terms, poops-out. I would love to say that’s a joke but I’ve read/heard the expression poop-out too much to discount it. In my case, the medication that had stopped working was my SSRIs or anti-depressants.

And they call it poop-out because it is not a gradual thing. One day it works, the next day it doesn’t. By the time I sat in the cinema to watch this movie my SSRIs had been off for a few days and I was struggling to function. What I needed that Sunday morning was exactly what I got: a movie that seeks to show the beauty of the world around us and teach us to be better people despite the sadness in our past that infects our present.

Heller has crafted something quite amazing with this movie as it manages to be all about Mr Rogers and not about him at the same time. You can watch this movie blind and be told that Mr Rogers is a fictional creation or one of the most famous Americans to have ever lived and it still holds together.

The story of Lloyd and his family and the help that he receives from Mr Rogers is so compelling and so simple that you can’t help falling in love with the film. It’s like a fable or a parable. The angry man who meets a wizard who gives him what he needs to stop being so angry and live happily ever after

A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood – Final Thoughts

Knowing who Mr Rogers was is irrelevant to your enjoyment of this movie. If you were raised on television chances are you have an idea who he was, and if you weren’t it doesn’t matter. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is somehow crafted for both audiences, and if you’re the audience who doesn’t know him, you’ll leave the cinema, turn on your phone and start Googling to know more.

Rhys and Hanks give great performances though Rhys can’t help but be overshadowed by Hanks. Rhys is so beset by storm clouds, it’s relieving to have Hanks’ bright sunny performance puncture them every now and then and bring back the movie’s levity.

And as for me, I left the movie endeavouring to be more like Mr Rogers: patient, kind, nicer to people. And for the most part, it’s worked. I find myself engaging in conversations with people more readily and trying to be a more patient listener rather than waiting for my turn to speak. And as I’m writing this I’m three days into a stronger prescription of SSRIs and things are looking a little clearer, a little brighter, and my neighbourhood is not quite beautiful yet, but it’s definitely on its way there.

Did you discover Mr Rogers through Marielle Heller’s film? Let us know in the comments!

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is currently playing in cinemas in the US and the UK.