Feb 10th
Bobby**
(Odeon Swiss Cottage)
The lives of various disparate characters at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in June 1968 are affected by the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy.
Retrospective history; a prosaic and often preachy script (and politically very one-dimensional in its unquestioned admiration of Bobby Kennedy), which is smoothed over by some individual ensemble performances and good period detail. The film works most effectively as a collage of the peripheral background characters (most of whom are fictionalised) that are quite skilfilly interwoven without giving the appearance of a series of vignettes strung together.
Bobby**
(Odeon Swiss Cottage)
The lives of various disparate characters at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in June 1968 are affected by the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy.
Retrospective history; a prosaic and often preachy script (and politically very one-dimensional in its unquestioned admiration of Bobby Kennedy), which is smoothed over by some individual ensemble performances and good period detail. The film works most effectively as a collage of the peripheral background characters (most of whom are fictionalised) that are quite skilfilly interwoven without giving the appearance of a series of vignettes strung together.
posted by Joe at 10:45 PM
2 Comments:
I've seen Bobby twice. I think the first time I was somewhat swept along with the emotion. The second time my eye was a little more critical and I would agree with your comments about the film being rather like a love letter to Robert Kennedy and being preachy in places. Still an excellent ensemble piece and I think the climax with the shooting is quite extraordinary and very cleverly done, interweaving live action with archive footage.
The assassination is quite cleverly filmed because you know what's going to happen, but for several seconds you're wondering 'when is he going to appear?'.
The story of the assassin himself (Sirhan Sirhan) is never covered - 'The Parallax View' was supposedly based on the Bobby Kennedy assassination - but this really isn't the point.
It's a film with a message, and although I'm not so sure that things would have turned out better if Bobby had lived (Nixon, for all his other vices, DID withdraw the GIs from Vietnam), it certainly marked another sad chapter in the 1960s dream of the Kennedys.
One last little poignant factoid I've since learned: the actual Ambassador Hotel itself was demolished shortly after filming was completed.
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