Do Your Heart a Favor and Watch “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

Many were brought to tears by the trailer for Won’t You Be My Neighbor? this spring when news of the documentary first began making its rounds. As a concept, a look at Fred Rogers’ life through episode footage and interviews with the people who knew him best is nostalgia bait for anyone raised over thirty-year span of his program or raised a child who was. Indeed, if you were a child or had one at any point since the Nixon administration, you were touched by the cultural influence of PBS, Sesame Street, and the man whose softly-spoken message withstood the tests of time, budget, and even the US Senate, to reach your living room. And if you were one of the millions who were touched by Mister Rogers’ message, you likely took for granted, as I did, the context in which the show thrived, and the wonder of a man whose open heart was for the time – and still now – a revolutionary act in service of a kinder, gentler world. Yes, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? offers the chance to better understand and appreciate the work of a father figure who helped raise many of us through television, but he’s never been the point himself. Its higher calling is that which has always been part of Fred Rogers’ work and ideas: ones of love, compassion, and kindness to yourself and others. It’s an invitation, as his show was, and a beautiful message that will leave you sobbing in your seat.

The film primarily follows his life from his adulthood in the 1960s, when he felt compelled to put seminary school on…