WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? (MorganNeville 2018)

[tabuno]

Chris ultimately proclaims that this documentary was "nothing special, really, just the usual archival footage and talking heads" and that "From a distance, superficially, the show and "Mr. Rogers" seemed, to this viewer - who never saw more than a few moments before changing channels - to be namby-pamby, goody-goody, slow, silly, and rather effete." Yet at the same time, Chris admits that "But it for me packs a quiet wallop because it makes you think. The sheer goodness of the man brings a lump to the throat."


As an older child, I watched a few of Mr. Roger's episode with interest and apparently for much longer than Chris did. It's hard to reconcile Chris's description of these children's episodes with "namby-pamby, and good-goody" while Chris also describes how Mr. Rogers took "on subjects that could be baffling and frightening to them (children), such as death, divorce, and assassination, and demystified them in a few simple heartfelt words." In some mysterious way, Chris has offered up a commentary that is a documentary of this documentary with his great ability to condense with spot-on reporting about this movie while at the same time describing this documentary in also oddly two parallel judgmental perspectives. Chris takes his time to emphasis how Mr. Roger's use of silence, prolonged time was rather special while also complaining about how "slow" the series felt when examined from a distance and superficially.


Yet what movie critics normally do is not examine a movie from a distance nor superficially. Surprisingly with all the vast experience that Chris has accumulated Chris appears to have forgotten that the use of "just the usual archival footage and talking heads" is a fundamental basis of most documentaries. What Chris seems to ignore is that it is the superlative editing and the flow by which a great documentary is made and which allows the viewer to experience "quite a wallop" instead of becoming wrapped up with all a problems that a bad or even mediocre documentary might create. In other words, Chris may have allowed his "just a few minutes" experiences watching Mr. Rogers become that superficial observations to diminish my own longer exposure perspective to Mr. Rogers series as a child which leads me to realize just how good this documentary truly is.

[Chris Knipp]

Tabuno,
You always seem to misread me. I didn't send a "mixed message," but described an original impression powerfully altered by viewing a documentary full of information new to me. I didn't watch "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" "less" than you. I did not watch it at all. I am too old. And when I was a kid, we didn't even have a TV set at home. I glimpsed the show, only glimpsed it when I was grown up. Since it went on for thirty years, I got plenty of glimpses. The "namby pamby" quality was what I took from those glimpses. But now that I know what the show was like and what the man was like, I am full of admiration. That's not a mixed message, that's somebody learning something, correcting an original impression that was wrong. I hope you can see what I'm saying, here.

You also misinterpret my saying the documentary - in style - was "nothing special, really, just the usual archival footage and talking heads." A documentary can be that, and still have a big impact on you. And Won't You Be My Neighbor has such an impact. It's an important film.

That said, the documentaries that as films I most admire are ones which discover, and do original and astonishing work. Examples are Philibert's To Be and to Have, Kahn's My Architect and Moselle's The Wolfpack. But you are right, the majority of docs are conventional in form and usually include talking heads and archival footage. The Wolfpack includes archival footage too, but the whole film is a discovery and amazing. Philibert's is an act of love and patience and research and neither talking heads nor archival footage. Kahn's is the discovery and revelation of the filmmaker's father, who at the same time is perhaps the greatest American architect of the 2oth century - an act of personal exploration with wide public interest as well. But to say it's not in this category of exceptional documentary is not to undervalue Won't You Be My Neighbor.

It's nice to get a debate going but this is a faux debate because I do not see the film or Fred Rogers differently from you. It would have been better not to talk so much about me but to talk about Fred Rogers and his show, as we learn about them from this documentary. And if you want to analyze my review, you should be a more careful reader. It is insulting to say that I examined the film "from a distance and superficially." Obviously I was moved by the film, and I have watched it very carefully and thoughtfully. It gives one much to ponder.

[Chris Knipp]

TWO TOP DOCS OF SUMMER.

This is cool news.



How two small documentaries stormed the US box office this summer

Amy Nicholson

Wed 27 Jun 2018
This summer, a striking number of US moviegoers have chosen quieter heroes over the loud Marvel clatter. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? and RBG, twin-brained panegyrics to kids TV host Mister Rogers and supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, have earned a combined $15m at the box office – whopping numbers for two documentaries with zero lasers, punches or zaps (RBG is already the 26th biggest doc of all time and last weekend saw Won’t You Be My Neighbor edge into the top 10). Consider these ticket sales a tithe. On Twitter, fans talk about their attendance as if they’d been to church. They cried, sighed and worshipped these icons of steadfast goodwill, and exited the theater inspired.

Good for them – and good for the independent film-makers who trusted their audience’s craving for stories about true courage, not CGI high jinks. (Rogers famously loathed the Superman franchise for encouraging kids to leap off roofs.) Ginsburg graduated with honors at her mostly male law school while raising a toddler and nursing her young husband though cancer. At 85, she does daily push-ups to stay strong enough to battle the culturally out-of-step conservatism of the court. Fred Rogers convinced television executives that children deserved emotionally intelligent programming. He talked honestly to his young viewers about death and divorce, even defining the word “assassination” the day after Robert Kennedy was killed.

See this Guardian story.