WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?: Love Thy Neighbor

Director: Morgan Neville
Runtime: 94 mins.
2018

The letdown of Won't You Be My Neighbor? is that it is mediocre in every facet of its construction.

The structure of the film is aggressively typical. We are given a general gloss of Fred Rogers, from the beginning of his career until his death. This is accomplished with little imagination by a balance of archival footage and interviews with those who knew him. Rarely do the interviews reveal anything particularly interesting--they function to reaffirm the history as presented.


This format is sporadically interrupted by short animated interludes, in which Fred is "meaningfully" portrayed by his most personal character, Daniel Striped Tiger. These tidbits are overwrought, the weakest scenes of the film. They strive for a broody melodrama that could hardly fit worse with Rogers' persona. As the only remotely original visual decision of the film, this ill-integrated conceit is an aesthetic sore thumb.

The archival footage is good, though never less than obvious. Most scenes feel like a Mr. Rogers greatest hits compendium. To make matters worse, the editing is too frenetic in its fumbling desire to keep hold of the audience's attention. Clips are rarely allowed to linger long enough for us make a real connection. Unsurprisingly, the exceptions are the best moments of the film.

Likewise, the narrative flits between subject matters with reckless abandon. Any time one of the interviewees reveals something surprising about Mr. Rogers, something that doesn't exactly fit the mold, the film flees without properly exploring the ramifications of the claim. For example, at one point it is suggested that later in his life, Fred became less like the innocent Daniel and more like King Friday, the lovable despot who believes he knows what is right for the world. That is an unexpected character arc, one that could interact in a compelling way with Rogers' public persona and legacy. But the film zips away from the claim before filling it out whatsoever. Every such potentially interesting revelation is brought to light for a second, then snuffed out, as if we were meant to only glance at it--a gesture towards complexity without the requisite followthrough. The film seems determined to avoid a hard perspective on any aspect of Fred Rogers, a fatal flaw for any documentary.

That being said... Won't You Be My Neighbor? made me cry harder than any movie has in years. I can't think of a greater disparity between the quality of a film and how hard it affected me. I can only attribute this to the enduring power of Rogers' social project, and the stunning empathy of his image. In that sense and in that sense alone, the filmmakers knew exactly what they were doing: the bare minimum that would allow them to step aside and let Rogers' charisma (buoyed by our palpable sense of nostalgia) work its magic. They were lucky, or rather quite conniving, to have Rogers as their subject matter. The trappings of his television program were admittedly uncinematic on the surface, but there was a magnetism about him nonetheless. His gaze was his most powerful tool. He had a way of looking at children, and often directly through the camera, that communicated attention, empathy, love, and a hint of melancholy. He could truly see a child in the way that none of the adults in their life are willing to do, or perhaps are simply incapable. To engage with a child as a human being with feelings at least as complex as adults--this was Fred's project, and it is one worth remembering even within the trappings of a mediocre frame.

2 / 5  BLOBS