Movie Review : A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)
The band Godsmack released a song called Cryin’ Like a Bitch in 2010, which instantly became one of the songs they’re known for. It’s a really weird, juvenile song that only speaks to men who never experienced real confrontation in their lives and romanticize the shit out of it. I suspect it also doesn’t relate to the experience of crying like a bitch in anyway, because it happened to me while watching a biopic about a child educator I knew next to nothing about.
That’s right, I’ve had over a thousand organized fistfights in my life and the first time I cried like a bitch while watching A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is the story of Fred McFeely Rogers (Tom Hanks), the host of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. He’s getting profiled in Esquire by Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), a staff writer with a nasty reputation of exposing celebrities. Vogel is going through a rough patch and Rogers picks up on it right away. The big shot cynical intellectual is going to face something he didn’t expect: pure, unadulterated kindness. Believe me, that shit fucks you up.
So…
Why did A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood make me cry like a bitch? Mr. Rogers certainly did not beat the shit out of anyone or anything in this movie, except perhaps my feelings. The only act of violence is committed by Lloyd’s drunken dad (Chris Cooper), who brazenly punched his son at his daughter’s third wedding. You get the gist of what kind of family Lloyd grew up in. Violence didn’t make me cry. Lloyd definitely didn’t by himself.
Nah, it had something to do with emotional maturity.
Helping others understand their own emotions and foster their intellectual and spiritual growth for a living requires a tremendous amount of emotional maturity. So much, it’ll make you look weird. Because normal people aren’t able to name their emotions, much less cope with them. When Mr. Rogers sits down, looks straight into my eyes and starts slowly telling me about his friend Lloyd being hurt in the first fucking scene, he was not only talking about Lloyd.
The scene looked borderline science fiction-y, but it went straight to my heart. Because the kindness of Fred Rogers was aimed at me as much as it was aimed at Lloyd or Tom Junod (the real asshole writer). A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood’s director Marielle Heller came up with that. She builds many, many bridges between the artificial reality of the show and the emotional reality of the audience, creating a weird in-between reality where her movie exists.
For example, the animation segments depicting the idealistic reality of Mr. Rogers initially seem corny, but your perception changes with every powerful display of Rogers’ kindness. Simple things: calling Lloyd at home to make sure he’s all right, offering more of his time, learning the names of his wife and kids, etc. It makes you want to matter like this to someone else. Through small gestures, Fred Rogers is selling people that his idealistic vision is possible.
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is what I call a sweet movie. It’s one of them warm, slow burning endeavors that rock you into a state of wordless bliss. It is not spectacularly complex or ambitious, but it is confident and plays to its strengths. Marielle Heller created a piece of cinema with tremendous rewatch value that is bound to become a cult classic in its own right. I don’t even care that I cried like a bitch. It made me feel better afterwards.
8.6/10
