on the new Fred Rogers movie
2019-11-13 21:16:38.825458+00 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
The Atlantic: 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.. So hard to find a summary pull quote of this, but...
I had counted on the plot’s many departures from my life to insulate me from the emotional effect of seeing some version of myself up there, but in the screening room I had no such protection, because the director, Marielle Heller, had been so faithful to the essence of the story. A long time ago, a man had seen something in me I hadn’t seen in myself, and now I was watching him see something in me and couldn’t help but ask, all over again: Who was he? Who was I? And what did he see? “You love people like me,” Matthew Rhys tells Tom Hanks. And when Hanks asks, “What are people like you?,” Rhys answers, “Broken people.” And that broke me, though I had never uttered those words to Fred in my life. He saw something in me, yes. Did he also see through me? Was my brokenness so obvious to him back then? Was Fred’s offer of friendship also a form of judgment?