Won't You Be My Neighbor (2018)

I grew up watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood more mornings than not. My mom probably remembers it better than I do, but from what I can recall I loved the show in my early childhood. In retrospect, Fred Rogers’s demeanor was probably a big part of that; the man was warm, compassionate, and more sophisticated than many of the other main characters of the other shows I watched alongside his.

One of the questions that has sat in my mind about Rogers, though, is whether he was like the man on the show. To have that kind of demeanor in everyday life would completely shock me in the cynical, jaded world in which we live.

The documentary on Rogers’s life Won’t You Be My Neighbor? answers this question of many with a resounding “yes.” This film is overwhelmingly optimistic yet not without a sense of grounded realism that Rogers himself possessed. It feels exactly like Fred Rogers the character which, it asserts quite confidently, was Fred Rogers the man.

Instead of focusing on the psyche of Rogers by diving into his roots – a topic I would have appreciated seeing – this doc focuses on the worldview Rogers held and the influence it had on those close to him. That is not to say it strays away from Rogers the man; it does dive deep into many things I did not know about him previously, such as his foray into adult television, his struggles with self-confidence in his work, and the reasons behind his unique and mature approach to children’s programming.

The most profound point this film made to me was that of Rogers’s Christian faith; Won’t You Be My Neighbor discusses his status as an ordained Presbyterian minister and how his principle desire was to minister to children. This makes a lot of sense to me (someone studying ministry in the American church) when considering the content he covered on his show. To an extent, Rogers did not shy away from covering topics from which other children’s shows would shy away; he devoted episodes to Robert Kennedy’s assassination, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, and racial discrimination, and entire weeks of his show to death and loss and conflict and war. Rogers had a gift for translating rough themes like these subtly into a children’s program, aiming for subconscious assent to his stance of loving everybody always rather than making overt statements that children would be incapable of understanding. His care for the child’s mind and his correct assertion that children have deep-seated emotions just like adults would still be considered radical for a television producer or star, yet it is precisely that subversion that makes him such a compelling figure.

Fred Rogers’s belief that every human being has inherent value and dignity is a notion that we need now more than ever, and this documentary makes that case loud and clear in an emotionally riveting way. Won’t You Be My Neighbor overwhelms with a shot in the arm of optimism and good-natured treatment of all. It overwhelms those who watch it with compassion and care for their neighbor in a way that Rogers’s Christianity would commend: that for those who might be vastly different from and socially unacceptable to us. As Jesus pleads after his parable of the Good Samaritan in a manner I imagine both Rogers and this documentary’s director Morgan Neville would echo, “Go and do likewise.”

My recommendation: Everyone needs to see this film.

My rating: 91/100