A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood 2019 ★★★★★
Rewatched Dec 28, 2019

Yesterday, my friend and I went to see “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” I had seen it already and was eager for my friend to see it. Instead, it became one of the weirdest experiences I have ever had at a movie theater.

I don’t know if it was because of the area, the time or the theater, but nearly half of the audience was disabled. And I don’t mean people with canes--I mean blind people, deaf people, people with walkers.

The blind family, made up of a father, mother, son and a German Shepherd, were seated one seat from me on the side furthest from the entryway. You would have thought it would have made more sense for the theater employee to escort them up the stairs on the opposite side of the entryway. But, no, the employee led them down the aisle to get to their seats. First came the employee, still carrying her broom and dustbin, then the service dog in his harness and leash, then the three blind people, each carrying their canes, grocery bags and duffles, inching by to get to their seats. The dog, his harness and leash clanking away, and the three blind people settled down with their bags, canes, supplies.

Then the mother and son promptly got on their phones and began texting into the first 15 minutes of the movie. So how do blind people text? I don’t know. But I do know that it entails haptic keys and one eye peering, as if looking at a microscope, at a very bright screen.

Then the rustling began. Every fifteen to twenty minutes the mother would get into a plastic grocery bag, feeling around for something. If you haven’t realized, the sound of a rustling plastic bag is loud and long, especially when you are in the dark and can’t see what you are looking for.

After the third reach into the grocery bag, the woman seated between me and the mother finally got up and moved.

And let’s not forget the deaf person. I actually thought someone was talking on the phone because I kept hearing what I thought was the other half of a cell phone conversation. After thirty minutes of this, and during a tense moment in the movie, I finally realized it must have been the deaf person’s audio version of what was happening on screen. So every time there was silence in the movie, I would hear this vague, distant murmuring. And if you’ve seen the film, you know there is a famous, sixty-second period of poignant silence.

You get the picture.

So bear in mind that this is all happening while Fred Rogers is embodying his famous lines, “ … it is a beautiful day in the neighborhood, will you be my neighbor?”

That is when it occurred to me that this is exactly what Fred Rogers is teaching me. Will “you”--meaning everyone, even when they are ill-behaved, rude, handicapped and wretched--be my neighbor?

Am I really willing; do I really want everyone to be my neighbor?

Or am I only interested in being neighbors with people that only act the way I want them to act; neighbors who are clean, well-spoken, well-mannered and functional?

Is my neighborhood really beautiful? Or am I perpetuating a facade? Do I really want “you” to be my neighbor?

Oh, let me mend my intolerant, broken little heart. Let me mend my fence. Let me mend.