I am not a movie critic. This will be the first “review of a movie” that I have written. Many movies these days are not worth the time one must invest to watch them, but I can look back with great fondness on many movies. I connect some of them to important moments in my life.

 

I think that the first movie I can remember seeing was Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland which came out in the summer of 1951. I would have been six. I was terrified by many of the characters, but most distinctly remember the Cheshire Cat. I had nightmares for weeks. The next year, in 1952, I saw The Story of Will Rogers which was a thrilling experience for me. Living in Oklahoma, I was curious about him because there were statues of Will Rogers around every corner. “Will Rogers” was my first “bio pic.” Then there was the Greatest Show On Earth, which also came out in 1952. That movie got me so excited that I broke my arm trying to reenact one of its scenes with my buddy. I can mark my personal growth and development with the movies. I was interested in history and was reading a series of biographies for children about the time I saw the bio pic of Will Rogers. I was just getting interested in girls when I saw Elvis’s debut movie, Love Me Tender, in 1956. I’ve never enjoyed frightening movies or science fiction, but I did love “westerns.” I like movies that seem to be real, although I did take my son to see the first “Star Wars” movie in 1977. I do not share the fascination that many people have with the big budget superhero action movies.

 

I think that my aversion to horror and sci-fi movies is rooted in the terror I experienced in the summer of 1953 when my uncle and his fiance took me to a drive in movie to see “Five.” Five  was a grainy balck and white movie that imagined the conflicts and challenges that faced the last five people on earth after a nuclear holocaust. At age eight I had absorbed enough of the nation’s Joe McCarthy induced fear of communism, and news clips of mushroom clouds, and stories about the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to believe that what was on the big screen of the drive in could soon be a reality. In school we regularly had drills to prepare us. These days children have drills to help them survive an active shooter. In those days, even in Oklahoma, we had drills to prepare us for the time when the Russians would bomb us. I can remember my mother earnestly advising me that if I were lucky enough to find a piece of candy or gum on the playground, I should not eat it because it might have been laced with poison by a communist. I have no idea where she got that idea, but the idea of a nuclear holocaust was always a looming possibility.

 

I can look back on my childhood and realize that I was awash in a multitude of signals, some good and some bad, that were coming to me through books, early TV, radio, movies, and the conversations I would overhear as my parents talked with friends, neighbors, and relatives. I came along many years before Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers. We had Howdy Dowdy with Buffalo Bob and Clarabelle the clown, and Kookla, Fran and Ollie, but I was an active “yard ape” and only watched our 17 inch black and white RCA TV when it was raining, and even then I preferred watching old Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, and Zorro movies to the puppet and clown shows. One form of TV content that I really enjoyed watching were the old news clips and documentaries about World War II that were produced by the government to celebrate our victories over the “Axis Powers.” I am not sure what lessons I learned from that kind of programing. 

 

Sesame Street started up in 1969, I am sure that my oldest son watched. Mr. Rogers was doing “warm up” shows in Canada and on Educational TV during the 60s, and came to PBS in 1971. All of my children watched both shows, but I only caught glimpses of these iconic shows as I passed by the TV going to and from the hospital and office. 

 

I am sorry to say that I did not see the first “Mr. Rogers” movie that came out in 2018. It was the highest grossing documentary about a person in history. I just wasn’t that interested. My wife saw it on a flight to California while I was reading and writing. I was not curious enough to take advantage of the opportunity. Perhaps, I thought that I knew all that I needed to know about Fred Rogers. I might have been more interested in another “bio pic” of Will Rogers. My respect, but moderate disinterest, in Mr. Rogers continued without interruption until last week. 

 

My wife and I celebrated our wedding anniversary last week. It was not an anniversary that ended in a five or zero. We planned a quiet evening in Hanover with dinner and a movie after a trip to a jewelry store; “just to look.” The only problem with our plan was that the movies at our favorite theater, the historic “Nugget,” did not match up with our tastes. There was an alternative. In near by West Lebanon, there is a “multiplex” that barely passes standards of acceptability. It is a tired and unhappy looking place in a strip mall with “dollar stores” and pizza parlors. Their options were also pretty bleak, but we really wanted to go to a movie. Who watches Netflix to celebrate their anniversary? That is how it happened that I watched the new Mr. Rogers movie with Tom Hanks playing Fred. “Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood” was the best option that dowdy multiplex had to offer us as we sought to avoid a disappointing evening. 

 

I must admit that Tom Hanks playing Fred won me over. You probably have already seen the movie, but if you have not, it is not the kind of movie that can be spoiled by prior knowledge. It is the kind of movie that is worth watching several times now, and perhaps, again and again on an annual basis. It’s a movie that elicits emotions and insights not unlike Its A Wonderful Life or The Wizard of Oz.

 

I have been reading magazine and newspaper articles about the movie from the moment the last credit rolled off the screen. That’s not an exaggeration. Before I left the darkened theater, I  pulled out my iPhone and Googled Tom Junod who wrote an article in Esquire in 1998, “CAN YOU SAY…“HERO”?: Fred Rogers has been doing the same small good thing for a very long time.” The movie plot is true to Tom Junod’s experience, although for the movie there are some changes in details. In the movie, Junod, the journalist whose article was the source material for the script, is played by Matthew Rhys, and his name has been changed to Lloyd Vogel. 

 

Junod tells the story behind his 1998 Esquire piece in an interesting Atlantic article with a long title, “My Friend Mister Rogers: I first met him 21 years ago, and now our relationship is the subject of a new movie. He’s never been more revered—or more misunderstood,”  Junod seems grateful that a few of the details and the names were changed by the screenwriters who turned his magazine piece into a movie script. The facts that did not change were that both the fictional Vogel and the real life Junod were successful, but very angry and intimidating feature writers who were being shunned by the people they might want to interview.  The fictional Vogel and the real life Junod induced fear and loathing in the people they were interviewing because of the way in which they exposed without mercy the faults and secrets of the people in their articles. Both men, the real man and the character, were struggling in all their interpersonal relationships because of the residual anger and pain from difficult relationships with their fathers. Mr. Rogers got both the fictional Vogel and the real life Junod to confess that they had once loved a stuffed animal called “Old Rabbit.”

 

Don’t take my word for the fact that this movie is worth your time and attention. The critics loved it. I would recommend the piece in the New Yorker by Richard Brody who writes:

 

From the start, Rogers comes off as a sage, a virtual philosopher with a tone appropriate for children but with ideas of a revelatory depth for all ages. Seeing Vogel unable to forgive his father, Rogers defines, for his virtual viewers, the concept of forgiveness: “Releasing a person from the feelings of anger we have toward them.” Throughout the movie, Rogers offers such words of wisdom and insight, revealing himself to be not merely the host of a children’s show but a sort of freelance activist clergyman whose main pulpit is the show but whose concern is society at large.

 

Brody sums it up:

 

The melancholy of “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” is that of a world out of whack—and of its dramatization of an unabated sense of responsibility to do whatever one can to help put things aright.

 

The movie also got the attention of another New Yorker reviewer, Anthony Lane. Mr Lane’s article was entitled, “THE ART OF THE AWKWARD SILENCE IN ‘A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD’: Marielle Heller’s film about Mr. Rogers, starring Tom Hanks and Matthew Rhys, skirts the pitfalls of mush.”  At the end of the article Lane draws a contrast between “A Day in the Neighborhood” and another contemporary film with Adam Driver, “The Report” which is all about the coverup of our torture of captured Al Qaeda terrorists. I think Lane’s point is that we are a nation that is confused about who we are and how we should relate to one another. Mr Rogers was not confused at all. He never veered from working hard to be a good person and a good neighbor. Lane writes:

 

If you had never heard of the United States, and saw a double bill of “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” and Scott Z. Burns’s new movie, “The Report,” what would you make of this unfamiliar land? On the one hand, it features acts of thoughtful kindness performed by men in leisurewear; on the other hand, it is a bleak zone, where acts of calculated malice are funded by taxpayers, investigated, and, in the mind of the nation, consigned to near-oblivion. The two films might as well take place on different planets. What’s so united about that?

 

My review of reviews ends with an article from the New York Times where A.O. Scott wrote, “ ‘A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood’ Review: You Are My Friend” This piece has a bit of attached video that is worth your attention and an internal link which will take you to a conversation with the movie’s director. The thought that Scott expressed that resonated with me was:

 

His young viewers trust him because he speaks to them without condescension or pandering, and also without pretending he is anything other than a grown-up. (To them he’s not “Fred,” but always Mister Rogers, and he always wears a necktie under his zippered cardigan.) His basic advice to fellow adults — “you were once a child, too” — suggests a tactful challenge to something St. Paul said in I Corinthians 13. You don’t put away childish things, like favorite toys and hurt feelings. You hold onto them, because they become touchstones of empathy, reminders of the vulnerability and sincerity that are the building blocks of the mature self.

 

Just as Scott captures the pure simplicity of the movie’s message in a few sentences, he also delivers the most succinct review of the movie’s plot. Perhaps if you have time to follow only one link besides Junod’s recent Atlantic article, Scott’s article would be the one.  

 

There is no question that the movie is very good, but that alone is not the reason that I wanted to bring it to your attention. I was left with the sense that the movie depicts the work of a man who has a message for healthcare providers that is important for us to hear now, and hear again often, about how to provide care to the people who seek help in our offices, clinics, and hospitals. Rogers was a talented and dedicated clinician who is a model for the focus, the patience, and the commitment that is necessary to make a difference in the life of a single individual or in the health of a population. 

 

How did he do it, and why did he do it? Those are the questions that Junod sought to answer in his original article. He knew that Rogers cared enough about him as an individual to persist in trying to express his concern through the rejection and resistance that Junod brought to their interview, but why?  Junod struggles to understand the origin of Rogers’ unsolicited sense of care for him. It was easier for Junod to grasp what Rogers was trying to do with others, especially children, and it was obvious to him that people responded to the love, and the explanations and admonitions that Rogers’ puppet shows, interactions with other characters on the show, and monologues modeled for them to emulate. The respect and love that Rogers experienced from a diverse population was epitomized by an event depicted in the movie that Junod says really happened. Junod and Rogers needed to take a subway ride. After boarding the subway and taking his seat, the other riders, people of all ages and ethnicities, recognized Mr. Rogers and spontaneously began to sing “It’s A Beautiful Day In the Neighborhood.” Rogers joined in the singing, as Junod looked on dumbfounded. Through his self loathing and contempt for the world, Junod just couldn’t understand what Rogers was trying to do, or why he cared. 

 

Why does someone want to help someone else? It is an important question to consider, especially at a time when so many people who have care responsibilities are feeling so depleted and overwhelmed.  On a few occasions, I have seen clinicians who harbored so much anger toward their patients that as they went through their days the slightest event could cause them to erupt in anger and rejection of those people who wanted their help, but might fail in their “compliance” with the advice that was offered. Some patients simply asked for more help than the clinician had the energy to deliver. The eruptions were occasionally obvious and affected the flow in the hospital or office. Most of the time they were “internal eruptions. ” There is no outward evidence, but the self loathing that follows the frequent exacerbation of such feelings can be devastating over time. I know this is true, because at times I was the clinician who was overwhelmed and defeated. 

 

Junod and others try to find the answer to Rogers’ apparent perfection in his personal history. He was a Presbyterian minister, and he led a life of personal discipline and piety that seems antithetical to the joy he radiated. In the movie, some of the most poignant scenes are the conversations between Vogel (Junod) and Rogers.  Rogers demonstrates mastery of the art of patiently waiting for the answer. He does not refute answers that he thinks are wrong, and he is willing to offer his own imperfections and failings in a surprisingly effective way that would be considered a violation of good practice by many experts in patient care.  It is easier to understand Junod than it is to understand how Rogers can so masterfully manage a life that demonstrates abundant love for everyone day after day for years. His wife tells us that Rogers was not perfect. Rogers tells us that he can get angry enough to bang on the base notes of the piano. He confesses his failures as a father, and acknowledges gratitude that his sons are men that he can respect despite his failures. Rogers seems to rely on the wisdom of childhood in a way that reminds me of the lesson of the children’s Christmas classic, The Polar Express, where only children can hear the ringing of the bell. Rogers advises us, as he famously advised some physicians who once sought his advice about how to talk with children who were frightened by their disease, “Remember, you were once a child, too.”

 

I am frequently frustrated and angered by what I see in the world. In the community work that I have begun to do with others in my town that we are calling The Kearsarge Neighborhood Partnership, I am frequently amazed and overwhelmed by the dysfunction in individuals and in the systems that theoretically are meant to serve their needs. My response in my despair is often, “They have made a mess of their life, and the system makes it worse.” I realize that there is little chance that our efforts will “fix it.” It’s not our job. But, then I realize that the children in these struggling families are either going to be helped, or they will fall into the same traps that overwhelmed their parents. Rogers understood the vulnerability of children, and he realized that if he could manage himself effectively, and both articulate and model a more effective and accepting way to be in the world, there might be a small chance for all of us. 

 

I could write much more, but I won’t do it now. I will say that I am fascinated by the brief glimpses of Rogers’ childhood as revealed in his therapeutic process with Junod. As I look for other commentaries, it is easy to wonder about how his own attempts to be a good person informed his ability to work hard to enable all children to have the understanding to cope with their own challenges and disappointments, but maybe I will write about that later. It would be most conjecture. I think we have already been given a lot to digest. 

 

If we can’t know for sure how Rogers persisted without variation or loss of his composure over such a long time,  we can’t deny that at least to our external examination, he did do it. He did not burnout in a way that was observable to the outside world. I would like to think that he knew that it was important to never openly fail the people he was trying to serve in a world that was often failing them. He models an ongoing challenge for all clinicians. We must care about a population with growing inequities and challenges that is composed of individuals with persistent physical and spiritual/emotional needs. Being a good neighbor is hard work with demands that deplete us. How did he manage to do what he did? The movie ends with Rogers sitting at the piano in an empty TV studio. Suddenly, he bangs hard on the base notes, and the scene fades to black.