WE’RE NOT CRYING, YOU ARE
In trying times, it’s Bittersweet to remember the wonderful example of Fred Rogers
Does anyone deserve hagiography?
If biographers are ethically bound to provide as well-rounded a portrait of their subjects as possible, what happens when they profile people who are nearly flawless?
Saintly figures like Mother Teresa, Gandhi and Jesus make the job of biography challenging — and so, it turns out, does Fred Rogers.
Filmmaker Morgan Neville rounds out his documentary on the performer in Won’t You Be My Neighbor? by exploring the psychology of the gentle Presbyterian minister who found his calling as a televised best friend for millions of children from the late ’60s until 2001 on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
This psychological and philosophical approach to Rogers was likely inspired by the man himself — the film informs us the minister was not only well versed but a participating thinker in the psychology of childhood development in the 1970s.
Neville documents his life without resorting to effusive praise, and in turn, makes a wonderfully empathetic film that doesn’t become sentimental: It captures the same principles that Rogers espoused.
Neville understands the need to explore why Rogers was so radiant and positive, his authentic persona so disarming it seemed impossible to believe.
Indeed, one segment deals with backlash over his show, including comedy sketches that imitated the show, various rumours about how he was supposedly a Navy seal escaping a dark past, clickbait thought-pieces criticizing a children’s show that committed the radical act of teaching love and kindness, and how his attempts to teach children about political events — such as Robert Kennedy’s assassination and 9-11
— affected Rogers personally.
One might think the purpose of including criticism is to engender sympathy for the subject. Instead, it demonstrates that the world didn’t know how to respond to Rogers.
Though the film glosses over details about his upbringing
— he suffered from childhood illness, was bullied and very lonely, says his mother, one of several family-member talking heads — Neville suggests the unoriginal but true idea that this remarkably positive man learned how to work through his anger and sadness.
Previous interview footage with Rogers (who died in 2003), some dating back to the 1960s with black-and-white film, make us privy to his personal psychology.
Rogers says that from a young age music became an outlet for him to process negative feelings. Rogers, gifted with safe, healthy parenting, understood early on that art could help deal with negative emotions.
The show’s cast and crew provide some colour and funny anecdotes — one crew member recounts silly pranks they’d play on set, and how he took a picture of his bare buttocks with Rogers’ still camera.
Neville has plenty of footage to play with, but the weakest part of the film is his decision to juxtapose the media visuals with simplistic animation.
It works to some degree, but the animation simplifies and makes too neat a visual motif for the breadth of the entertainer’s life.