A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Marielle Heller's engrossing Can You Ever Forgive Me? from last year depicted the descent of a blocked and frustrated writer into a morass of self-destruction through fraud. Heller's latest, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, charts a different though still riveting course as it recounts the beginning of the friendship between a magazine writer (Matthew Rhys) and Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks with his usual uncanny brilliance). Cynics will no doubt chuckle at Rogers' unrelenting cheesiness but will quickly be entranced by his steadiness and abiding decency. It's those qualities that the wounded and bitter Lloyd Vogel doesn't trust, and tries to reveal as Rogers' attempt to mask his own demons. A new father who has resisted the role, Lloyd is estranged from his own father (a wonderful Chris Cooper) who is trying to reconnect after years of absence. Heller has crafted a visually arresting and narratively complex story that brings together fine actors for exchanges that resound with truth and healing. At one point toward the end of the film, Rogers and Lloyd are sitting over lunch and Rogers asks for a minute of silence to call to mind all of the people who made their lives possible. For that entire minute, not a sound, not a breath was heard in the theater during the screening I attended. What a touching sequence!