Documentary Review: Won't You Be My Neighbor

Won't You Be My Neighbor (2018)

Directed by Morgan Neville

Written by Documentary

Starring Mr. Rogers 

Release Date June 8th, 2018

Published June 8th, 2018

What is missing from the world in this day and age? Kindness. Kindness appears to be missing in this day and age. While everyone is yelling at each other and becoming tribal via social media, kindness is becoming more and more rare. Kindness exemplifies the work of Fred Rogers, the remarkable host of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. The life and work of Fred Rogers is now being celebrated in a new documentary called “Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?).”

In the 1951, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Fred Rogers was on his way to become a Presbytarian Minister when he first saw a television. The remarkable invention inspired him with its seemingly endless possibilities. Mr. Rogers would become a Minister eventually as well as a music scholar with a degree in music composition from Rollins College in Florida before settling into the world of television at WQED in Pittsburgh.

Rogers determination from the beginning was to work in children’s television and by 1963, the seeds of what would become Mr. Rogers Neighborhood were sewn. You likely know about Mr. Rogers and his sweaters and his songs and puppets but did you know he studied child development with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh alongside? That’s just one of the fascinating notes that make Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?) so unique and interesting.

"Won’t You be My Neighbor(?)" was directed by Morgan Neville, a documentarian who specializes in music documentaries. His “20 Feet from Stardom” won the Academy Award for Best Documentary feature at the 2013 Academy Awards. Neville is a smart, thoughtful and curious director who comes at the material of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?)” with an eye toward a conventional documentary narrative, a linear, life story, approach.

However, the unusual part of the “Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?)” is in the weight Neville gives not just to telling Mr. Rogers’ life story but explaining the impact he had on the lives of his viewers. Rogers was a quiet revolutionary, a Republican who fought for the funding of PBS in front of Congress and won. In 1968, in the wake of the death of Robert F. Kennedy, Rogers engaged his child audience in a conversation about death.

That same year, as controversy raged over civil rights and black people were being kicked out of public pools, Rogers enlisted his friend, Francois Clemmons as Officer Clemmons in the Neighborhood, to share a soak in his pool. The conversation had nothing to do with race or the raging controversies, it was just pleasant small talk about the weather but the visual of two people, black and white, sharing a kindly conversation, said what the conversation did not.

Clemmons is among the very emotional interviews that are featured in “Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?), alongside Rogers’ sons and his wife, Joanne. Naturally, everyone has lovely things to say about Rogers but the stories aren’t saccharine hagiography, but rather an earnest, emotional, fond remembrance. The film humanizes Rogers, especially near the end of the film when we get a glimpse of Rogers’ own insecurities, the kinds of things he helped children get passed.

“Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?)” is a remarkable documentary without being showy or over-dramatic. Like its subject, the documentary is quietly revolutionary, playing to our emotional attachment to Mr. Rogers while genuinely educating us about this remarkable man and his impact on the world. For me, his kindness is a model. Rogers’ kindness is a superpower better than most superhero powers. Kindness is at the heart of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?) and that kindness, remembering that kind of kindness, makes this the best documentary of 2018 thus far.

Movie Review: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) 

Directed by Marielle Heller

Written by Noah Harpster 

Starring Tom Hanks, Matthew Rhys, Susan Kelechi Watson, Chris Cooper 

Release Date November 22nd, 2019 

Published November 20th, 2019

The new Mr. Rogers movie, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, is a revelation. The story of an Esquire reporter, Lloyd, played by Matthew Rhys, who is assigned to profile Mr. Rogers for the magazine defies conventions in ways that are entirely unexpected and delightful. Director Marielle Heller has truly come into her own with this remarkable artful yet accessible movie that is not merely about the legendary PBS kids show host Mr. Rogers, but about all that he stood for and embodied. 

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood opens with that oh so familiar theme song of the same name. Here, however, it is sung by Tom Hanks, who portrays Mr. Rogers in a role that artfully incorporates elements of fantasy and reality. The opening Mr. Rogers Neighborhood segment is a fantasy that has Mr. Rogers introducing us to his new friend, Lloyd, a deeply troubled soul who writes for Esquire Magazine and struggles with being a new father while being estranged from his own father, Jerry, played by Chris Cooper. 

Lloyd has alienated so many people in his career that, according to his editor, played with gravitas by Christine Lahti, no one wants to be interviewed by him anymore. Only one person of note has agreed to an interview with Lloyd and that person is Mr. Rogers. The nice guy kids show host puff piece is not Lloyd’s style but with no other option on the table, he agrees and travels to Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood in Pittsburgh for the interview. 

Things are somewhat off-kilter from the start in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and it is a risky proposition. Director Marielle Heller, fresh off of the Oscar nominated success of Can You Ever Forgive Me starring Melissa McCarthy, risks alienating the audience by immediately having Hanks’ Mr. Roger break the fourth wall and act as narrator of the movie, introducing the more straightforward, dramatic and familiar scenes. 

Heller then chooses to transition from scene to scene using the models right out of the Mr. Rogers Neighborhood set. It’s a style that evokes the esoteric direction of a Charlie Kaufman or Michel Gondry but in a decidedly more accessible fashion. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is stylistically bold yet lacking in pretension. That’s likely owed to the subject, Mr. Rogers himself was notably unpretentious, a quality that Tom Hanks captures in his performance. 

Another bold choice that Heller makes is casting Hanks and Mr. Rogers in what is essentially a supporting role. The heavy dramatic lifting here is done by Matthew Rhys as Lloyd. The Emmy Award winning co-star of the hit drama The Americans, Rhys has the burden of being both a character in and of himself and the audience avatar, the one who must bring us closer to Mr. Rogers and help us to understand what made him special. 

Rhys’ performance is brimming with life and complex emotions. His backstory is brilliantly layered into the storytelling and Rhys evokes his past trauma effortlessly with his expressive, sad eyes. The scenes of Lloyd interviewing Mr. Rogers are challenging and fascinating. There is a threat that Mr. Rogers might come off as too all-knowing and benevolent as he gently yet inquisitively probes Lloyd’s obvious emotional wounds. Rhys and Hanks are remarkable for how well they ground these charged conversations in a way that feels authentic to the movie and to the memory of Mr. Rogers. 

Lloyd is exactly the kind of person who needs the kinds of lessons that Mr. Rogers taught on his show. These are lessons of compassion, forgiveness and understanding that Lloyd missed out on as a child due to his myriad traumas. Having to learn these lessons as an adult via becoming a parent with his wife Andrea, played by Susan Kelechi Watson, and by the re-emergence of his estranged father, Jerry,  finds Lloyd emotionally ill-equipped and Mr. Rogers offers unexpected guidance. 

What an absolutely lovely way to tell this story. Director Heller and screenwriters Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster, could have taken the easy way out, cast Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers and call it a day. Instead, they chose daring and artful devices to reveal the way Mr. Rogers affected so many lives in so many ways and do it in a fashion that takes his lessons from the simplicity of childhood to the complexity of adulthood. 

Now that I have seen it, I can’t imagine it being dramatized any other way. I had feared that 2018’s Mr. Rogers Neighborhood documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, would render A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood redundant. Instead, what we have is an even greater tribute to the legacy of Mr. Rogers, a film that masterfully evokes Mr. Rogers’ best qualities while not making Rogers out to be a saint or a metaphorical martyr for some notion of family values. 

Beautifully captured, boldly emotional and deeply affecting, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood ranks as one of the most moving filmgoing experiences of my life and one of my favorite films of 2019, a year that is truly coming alive with incredible movies.