Mark Reviews Movies: WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 7, 2018

It was such a simple and quite lovely idea: Use the medium of television to talk to children directly, with the respect and understanding that they deserve. Tell them about life, in all of its fundamental wonder and troubling difficulties, and their emotions, in all of the complexity that most adults didn't comprehend. Teach them some lessons about the intrinsic value of every individual person, and constantly reassure each and every child that he or she possessed that inherent value, too.

Generations of kids—this writer included—grew up watching Fred Rogers, the ordained Presbyterian minister who became an unlikely TV star, as he welcomed his young audience into what seemed like his home and his world of make-believe. Won't You Be My Neighbor? clearly wants Rogers' now-adult audience to experience that pleasant flood of the nostalgia of childhood, as director Morgan Neville plays an assortment of clips from the show.

It's undeniable that it's nice to see Mister Rogers again, walking through the front door of his house, singing a happy, inviting tune and going through the customary ritual of putting on his casual, around-the-house wear. The seemingly forgotten details of the show, lost in the passage of decades and years, return on screen, and now, we remember, like the laugh of an old friend or the smell of some forgotten place, how Mister Rogers would feed his fish, check out what's happening in the world by way of a magical picture frame, and await a parcel from the friendly deliveryman.

The routine, we learn from this documentary, was intentional and always the same. Mister Rogers' home was supposed to be a safe place—a place where little, if anything, changed. Childhood is a time of constant change, but here, for about thirty minutes every day of the week, was a place that seemed untouched by the uncertainty of that big and sometimes scary world. Whatever was happening in a child's life, this was a place of security, housing a man who reminded that child that he or she was loved and was capable of loving.

That was Rogers' philosophy, engrained in him by his faith and his ability to recall what it was like to be a kid. The film helps us to see how he put his beliefs into practice, as it jumps to and fro through the chronology of Rogers' life and work.

The approach isn't quite biographical in the traditional sense. It focuses primarily on the show. Rogers' career began when he started producing and writing music for a children's TV program at a local public television station in Pittsburgh, after realizing that the medium wasn't providing kids with material that aid them in their development (No number of pies to the face is going to teach a kid the right lesson).

This wasn't just some moral crusade. Rogers, who died in 2003 at the age of 74, had done the work, participating in a study of early childhood development at the University of Pittsburgh. His own show was next. "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," which started broadcasting to public stations across the country, became an instant hit, and Mister Rogers, the star's unadorned semi-persona (Basically, everyone interviewed here says, the guy on TV and the guy in real life were identical), became an icon to kids.

Neville mostly takes us through the highlights, from the show's first week, when the puppets in the world of make-believe have to convince a despotic ruler to tear down a wall he built out of fear of change, to the way Rogers would directly address the tragedies of the day (Robert F. Kennedy's assassination and the Challenger disaster), in order to help kids comprehend the incomprehensible. There's his testimony before a Senate subcommittee, in which he single-handedly convinced a jaded senator of the importance of public television for children. It's not the first time we see him catch a disbelieving adult off-guard: During an interview, in which his genuineness is called into question, Rogers has the interviewer talk to one of his puppets. There's no question after that. There are glimpses of his public appearances and more private meetings with kids, where they want to see the puppets or to give their TV neighbor a hug.

The portrait here is one of a man of immense patience, understanding, and kindness. The film's talking heads include friends, co-workers, and his family members—the late Rogers' wife Joanne and their two sons, one of whom says that it was tough living up to a man who was "almost a second Christ." No one has an ill word against him. Everyone seems genuinely happy to have the chance to talk about Rogers again.

The behind-the-scenes material ranges from amusing but slight (the outtakes and pranks on set) to insightful. In the latter category, there's the way that one puppet, the timid and insecure Daniel Striped Tiger, was Rogers' way of communicating his own insecurities. We don't expect that of a man who saw firsthand the ways in which he brought joy and compassion into the lives of countless children, but nonetheless, there it is. Stories of Rogers' childhood, learning the piano as a means of expressing his emotions and suffering from an assortment of illness, play out in animation, with the tiger standing in for the man as a child.

Won't You Be My Neighbor? may be an obvious appeal to nostalgia, but it's not a cynical one. Neville wants us to comprehend how and why the show worked, what made Rogers tick, and why his message of basic decency is as vital as ever.

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