I really expected this movie to attract more people than it did. It was a very meager audience of maybe 5-6 people total in that theater (although it was the 9:30pm showing). I thought we were alone in the theater, just Wife and I until the end of the movie when both sets of people up on top started looking at their phones and one could see the glow of their screens.
I expected the movie to be about Mr. Rogers and his path from young nobody to TV personality. Instead, it was really about a guy tasked with writing about him and through him, we see how great a person like Mr. Rogers really is. My initial observation of the man tells me he has a little OCD or something where he isn't "normal", but probably touched by something and him being a bit on the spectrum, as they say. Time and again, they show him fascinated with any human that is a little different, but the attention he pays to them is not the kind of attention regular people give you. He really listens, like his focus goes 100% to that person or thing in front of him. He even has to have a "handler" to keep him moving in a crowd, otherwise it seems he would lock eyes with a person and want to stay there all day hearing their life story.
Lloyd works for Esquire magazine and he has been tasked with interviewing Mr. Rogers, of PBS fame. He thinks it is a fluff piece and he seems to be a kind of guy that only writes the "truth" in which he digs up the dirty reality and makes people look bad, was my interpretation. Mr. Rogers was warned and gladly accepted and even insisted on him interviewing him. They have a few different meetings, the first one leaves an incomplete feeling in Lloyd's mouth as it is between filming of the PBS show, but he wants more and in the subsequent days, Mr. Rogers calls his house and has a conversation with the wife who he has remembered all the details of their conversation and she is star struck. Mr. Rogers has noticed that Lloyd is not well, showing up with a bruised nose and upon finding out he was in a fight with his dad kind of goes on a mission to help him mend this broken relationship.
Lloyd wants to keep his life private and only focus on Mr. Rogers' story, but to have him open up, you must give of yourself too. Talking intimately with someone means you have to share too, it is not just a one way conversation. We are left wondering a bit about Mr. Rogers, he never really opens up about his "anger" and he seems to split his emotions into different puppet characters. The one cat that is shy seems to have a lot of interesting stuff "to unpack" as they say, but the story doesn't get into it.
In the end, Lloyd is better for meeting and getting to know Mr. Rogers. He mends his relationship with his dad who walked out on his mom when she got sick, admitting he was afraid and immature at the time. He is now trying to mend fences as he is sick and nearing his death. After briefly fighting him away, Lloyd accepts his father back into his life and seems because of that to loose the angry edge that has plagued him all his life.
It was touching and Tom Hanks was terrific, but it also played a little hollow to me. We didn't get to see Mr. Rogers lose his shit, throw any tantrums. He mentions that sometimes he feels blue and a way to feel better is to play all the "low tones" on a piano. In the end scene, he is sitting on a piano and after playing a delicate little tune, he moves over and smashes the "low tones", so there is something deeper to Mr. Rogers, but I guess that will remain private.
I ended up standing up since I thought it was just Wife and I (the other people were on the top most row and I didn't notice them until they had their phones light up after the movie). I think if I had sat through the whole movie, I probably would have fallen asleep, it was a little slow and although there were touching moments, you could see them coming, so I did tear up, but never got to bawling.
No comments:
Post a Comment