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 c
heesiness
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!
As you closely read the two photographs above -- Sally Mann's "Candy Cigarette"(top) and Diane Arbus's "....jpg)
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