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The
press releases for the film Bobby never fails to mention
how it was difficult for its director and writer, Emilio
Estevez, to get support for its production. It wasn’t
just the logistics part; the actor/director almost gave
up on the project.
The film
bears the title after Robert Kennedy, the other brother
who almost became president of the
United States of America
until he was, like his elder, more mythical brother,
John F. Kennedy, assassinated. I can imagine Estevez
running around with the plot soliciting the attention of
industry listeners and trying to get the support of
would-be producers, telling them that while the film
centers on Bobby Kennedy, the film is not really about
him. Much less about the Kennedys.
In a
nation whose collective hope has always been built
around the national myth and the political legend of the
Kennedys, the idea of using a Kennedy to tell another
story is simply unthinkable.
And so
it goes that the film finally ends up with Anthony
Hopkins as the executive producer. And so it goes that
the venerable Hopkins, undeniably a person who combines
in him both commercial and aesthetic gravitas, starts to
lead a cast that should have been called “an all-star
cast”—except for the fact that such label conjures
parade than presence.
Here we
are watching a film that indeed is really more about the
persons—characters—who were at the Ambassador Hotel the
night the senator was killed. And it works.
Other
filmmakers do this. Altman does this perfectly, as in
putting all characters as if they are on different
universal planes. An event then brings them together.
Disaster films do this, too. While boarding a ship, or
as the ocean liner sails, we get to know the characters
one by one. Or, as the plane is about to float into
space, we are introduced to the coupling and uncoupling
of characters. Then the disaster happens and all we are
concerned about is how they would survive.
With
Bobby, we know who is going to die. We just don’t know
who these other people are and how they will figure in
the impending tragedy. What the film gives us are
stories that are—and this is the thing that sets this
work of Estevez miles apart from others—as compelling
and as moving as anything that will happen in that
hotel.
Estevez
works tricks with a nation’s collective memory. He
actually frees them—those who still remember that dark
day either through photographs or direct experiences—and
us from being caught in an ending, which is the death of
a young senator.
As the
varied personal vignettes unfold, we find them terribly
interesting that we become as interested in them and
their resolutions, even as we know at the back of our
mind that something gruesome is about to take place.
Estevez
creates this atmosphere of double suspense by playing
God and Gossip. The suspense is both for Bobby and the
other characters around his political life and those who
are coincidental players in the making of the myth by
being in that area. And what characters!
There is
the young support group around him. Joshua Jackson plays
Wade, Ivy Leaguish and confident, to Nick Cannon’s
Dwayne, an insider who feels still an outsider because
he is a “Negro.” Wade believes he is going to be a
Secretary of State; Dwayne will settle for Secretary of
Transportation. In the kitchen is a merry mix of Blacks
and Latinos, lost in their jobs and in their tiny
wishes. Bobby represents for some of them big dreams.
In the
kitchen is Jose, who has to give up his ticket for a
baseball game because he has to work double shift. He
cannot leave for a break else he leaves his post
forever. In the kitchen, too, is the cook who has the
tongue of a poet: Edward Robinson played by Laurence
Fishburne.
Fishburne is one mighty good actor but take note of that
scene, when his character tells Jose that he is like a
young king, kind, compassionate and daring. Freddy
Rodriguez as Jose listens and finds the language of
Edward much too melodramatic but sincere, and his
expression goes from being entertained to feeling
embarrassed, capturing in a few seconds for us the
fragility of being a nonwhite American in the ‘60s, or
even now.
The list
goes on. Elijah Wood is a young man who arranges a
marriage so he will not be sent to
Vietnam.
Lindsay Lohan turns in a fine sensitive performance as
his bride. Anthony Hopkins is Casey, the retired doorman
who still comes to the hotel and plays chess with his
friend, played by Harry Belafonte. The two are a picture
of poignancy and grace. Helen Hunt and Martin Sheen are
wealthy couple, donors to the campaign of Kennedy. They
talk of depression and, in a richly textured encounter,
baffle us as to who between the two of them is on the
verge of real depression.
Emilio
Estevez is Tim Fallon, husband of the popular singer
Virginia Fallon, played by Demi Moore. Their scenes as a
husband waiting on the wife and the wife hurting her
husband are tenderly staged vignettes of emotional
battery. What remains in my mind, however, other than
the assassination scene toward the end of the movie, is
that between Sharon Stone’s beautician and Moore’s
alcoholic singer. Never collapsing into camp, the two
women are a marvel of quiet intensity, with Stone as
Miriam, splendid and unrecognizable, as her character
recedes into the background.
At the
end, when the killing has taken place, the passionately
erudite speech of Bobby Kennedy is played. Simon and
Garfinkel’s “Sound of Silence” is played as if it is
being played for the first time. Aretha Franklin’s wail
with Mary J. Blige about “never gonna breaking my faith”
is heard and you believe it. You better believe it.
Emilio
Estevez writes the screenplay for this film made great
by the small stories within, even as Rex Reed calls it a
“sprawling political epic.” |
