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Martin Sheen in Bobby
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US history brought to life
BOBBY
Directed by Emilio Estevez
Certificate 15
THIS is a hard film to decipher. In terms of pure entertainment, the vast mix of characters are spread a little too thin for much of this film for the viewer to truly engage with. But as the show progresses to a shocking finale, you realise gradually that you do care about people who writer and director Emilio Estevez did not conclusively make you interested in at first.
Set in the Los Angeles Ambassadors Hotel, the film charts a day of destiny for the USA – the day presidential hopeful Bobby Kennedy won the Californian primary, and the day he lost his life.
Using snaps of original footage, the opening sequences are a powerful, visual appraisal of what might have been had Kennedy lived. Estevez uses the daily lives of a host of workers and guests at the hotel to reflect what the political climate of America was like in 1968, a year when the hopes of the Baby Boomer generation were crystallised and then dashed.
The individual stories of the people in the hotel starts in the basement, where we meet repellent racist kitchen manager Timmons (Christian Slater), who shows his disdain for his Mexican workforce.
There is a focus on bus boy Jose (Freddy Rodriguez) and it is used as a discussion of race relations in 1960s’ America. It moves up through the floors, to reception staff, managers and then finally guests, and what June 5, 1968 was like for people in America on that day.
However, at times the film is trying to tell a complicated story in an overly simplistic way. Small things grate.
There is a ridiculous, unbelievable, hippie character who feeds two young activists LSD. It is at times too simplistic about the reasons for being in Vietnam, while the character of Laurence Fishburne, the head chef, is supposed to be a wise old sage of ethnic relations but the viewer is told too little about his background for his story to be anything but a confusing aside.
However, forget the problems with the occasional basic stories. The film works for three reasons. Firstly, the actors are watchable – this features Heather Graham, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, Lindsay Lohan, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Elijah Wood, Ashton Kutcher, Martin Sheen, and Harry Belafonte to name but a few.
Secondly, it is nice to look at. A Californian hotel full of snazzily dressed people makes it easy on the eye. Thirdly, and most importantly, this works as a fine piece of political film making.
It is linked to America of today – we are shown how the issue of swinging Chads, the computerised voting system that won George W Bush the 2001 election, was an issue in the California primary. The threat of global warming is subtly discussed. And the footage of demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, and the arguments against it, are eloquently told and are used as a requiem for the generation of soldiers being sent to Iraq in 2007.
Perhaps it is a shame that this film has been released now – it would be nice to have seen it hit the screens in the United States closer to election time.
It could only be a boost for the candidacy of Barack Obama, who more and more seems to share the same sort of platform and ability to deliver simple rhetoric as Bobby Kennedy.
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