It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood -- A Review

Tom Hanks and the real Mr. Rogers

This is absolutely the best movie I have seen in years. It is beautiful. It is a great relief to know that the real world is not limited to what we see in the news or in too many movies or on television. Like the real Mr. Rogers, this movie helps. 

First of all, let's be clear about this: This is NOT a children's movie. It celebrates imagination. It has music and lyrics, but it is not escapist entertainment. There is violence seen and unseen, but it is not a shock-and-awe noise fest. There is goodness and light, but as with real goodness and light, there is pain and shadow.

It is also not a biopic about Mr. Rogers. That's why Tom Hanks has been nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Supporting Actor. That and the fact that he does a really good job being Mr. Rogers.

Oh dear, oh dear. There is so much I would tell you about this movie. But, it truly is best if you see it for yourself. The writers Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster and director Marielle Heller have given us the great gift of a movie that is innovative, relevant, inspiring. It uses silences, music, thoughtfully slow-speed pacing, and our own memories to move us through anger to hope. Hollywood can make an artistically sound movie.

This is Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. And just like the real Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood you venture into reality through the Neighborhood of Make Believe. Pittsburgh, PA is beautifully portrayed by scale models, as is New York City, and, of course, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. There's Mr. Rogers' house. Remember it? The little one at the end of the street. Just as it was when you visited it as a child. Or, if you are like me, when you visited it with your child.

The movie begins "Hello, Neighbor." Mr. Rogers introduces us to his neighbor Lloyd Vogel.

This is Lloyd Vogel's story. He is an investigative reporter for Esquire magazine. (Which by-the-bye, you'll get to see how a magazine is made. This is, after all, Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. Remember when he took us to a graham cracker factory and showed us how graham crackers were made. And one time it was crayons. And blue jeans. And even zip-up cardigans like he always wore. But I digress.)

Yes, Lloyd Vogel is well-played by Matthew Rhys. He's a hard-bitten reporter looking for the truth about his subject. The real truth. The sordid underbelly truth. Having grown up in a dysfunctional family (Didn't we all, in our own family's way?) Vogel comes to his perceptions logically.  

But Lloyd Vogel's editor gives him an assignment -- profile Mr. Rogers for a series Esquire is running on American heroes. I would tell you why she chose to assign Mr. Rogers to Lloyd, but better you should discover it in the movie. It does make for some very funny moments as the cynical reporter tries to deal with the real Mr. Rogers. Oh the looks on Lloyd's face!

 And evocative moments when Mr. Rogers speaks to us, individually.

What's new in his life that sets Lloyd Vogel on this path with Mr. Rogers? Besides the work assignment, that is. His father comes back into his life. If that's not enough, Lloyd has a new baby. A new baby to whom Lloyd is giving an equal opportunity to grow up in a dysfunctional family. 

The overarching theme of the movie is Forgiveness, perhaps one of the hardest feelings to achieve. And feelings were what Mr. Rogers' life's work was spent helping us learn to deal with.

Feel free to sing along!

     "What do you do with the mad that you feel
     When you feel so mad you could bite?
     When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong...
     And nothing you do seems very right?"

Or

     "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood

     A beautiful day for a neighbor
     Would you be mine?
     Could you be mine?
     Won't you be my neighbor?"

Mr. Rogers, we love you, just the way you were.

The Post -- A Movie Review

          Real -- Then              Hollywood -- Now   

                             

Real headline from June 18, 1971, "Documents Reveal U.S. Effort in '54 to Delay Viet Election"
First of a Series
By Chalmers M. Roberts
By THE WASHINGTON POST

Real headline from the Denver Post which picked up the story from The Washington Post,
"Fitness devices expose troops"
By Liz Sly
By THE WASHINGTON POST
January 28, 2018 at 6:04 pm

A striking similarity, don't you think?

There are differences. The first headline was on a hard copy of a newspaper. Perhaps the tactile nature of the bearer of bad news made it all the more shocking. Not to mention the fact that newspapers, printed using Linotype machines to produce lines of type then set into the printer, left ink smudges on your breakfast hands.

The second headline showed up on my laptop as I read my digital edition of The Denver Post this morning. (For the curious reader. No printer's ink smudges here.)

Steven Spielberg has done it again. Another excellent movie. The Post staring Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks is about a newspaper that prints information the United States Government (You know, that government "of the people, by the people and for the people") would rather "the people" not know.

Actually, just as there was more to those days than the Vietnam war, there is much more to this movie. Women's rights, a mega-defensive President. (At least Nixon's expletives were deleted.)

What the movie got wrong. Not in the opening scenes where the soldiers pushed through threateningly quiet, dense jungle, unable to see their enemy. Or the soldiers amid the noise and chaos of injury and loss following a battle. And maybe the soldiers would have referred to the "long-hair," Daniel Ellsberg instead of "that old guy." What was wrong in the opening scenes was that the soldiers looked too old. The average age of American soldiers in Vietnam was 22 compared to WWII and Afghanistan when they were 26. Four years difference is not much, is it? They're all too young.

What The Post gets right is Robert McNamara's glasses and the part in his hair. And the times.

Meryl Streep's portrayal of Katherine Graham is stunning. She gives us a woman who grew up in luxury and privilege. She married. She raised children. She gave the best parties, attended by the best people, including Washington's great and powerful. A woman who lived like she was supposed to until her husband died. Worse yet. Her husband committed suicide and left her to run a newspaper.

As publisher, Graham was certainly not responsible for the business on a daily basis. She had a Board for that. All men. She had an Executive Editor responsible for the newspaper's content. Also a man.

Tom Hanks gives us the editor Ben Bradlee. His character is not nuanced. He's the gungho newspaper guy. His first concern is to beat the competition -- The New York Times. Which brings up the question of the Constitution's First Amendment right to a free press.

That, in turn, brings up the fact that Bradlee's Big Boss is a woman.

For my money, the absolute best scene in the movie is when Bradlee's wife describes for him precisely what Graham's situation is. She is not prepared by her background or her sex's recognized position in society to shoulder the responsibility of defending Freedom of the Press. Such a decision would require her to abandon her loyalties to friends high in the government. To that government itself. Not to mention the very real possibility that she could be imprisoned for publishing classified information from what would come to be called The Pentagon Papers.

Worst case scenario, Bradley might do some time in prison. He might lose his job. He would definitely become high-profile in the world of journalism and would be in high demand for another job.

Graham, on the other hand, could lose her family's business. Their income. The jobs of hundreds of people who worked for her. Her position in her community. Her friends. Her father and husband's legacies.

SPOILER ALERT!!! In case you weren't born when all this went down, were still doing your hippie-dippy drugs, or living your own life safe and secure oblivious to your country's crises of faith ....

She did decide to run the story. The audience where I watched the movie broke into applause. And that's not all. The movie ends with a night watchman calling in a possible break-in at the Watergate office building.

Here we are folks -- 2018 almost half a century later. Less than a week before I saw the movie I took part in the Women's March. More than fifty-thousand of us in Denver. We were of all ages and ethnicities and genders and preferences. And there were many thousands more across this nation as we endure another crisis of faith in our country.

Freedom of the Press is included in the First Amendment to the Constitution for good reason. Remember:  “If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, ... it expects what never was & never will be. Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.”  -- Thomas Jefferson