| Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 94.3

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| Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 94.3 | The History Cooperative

Movie Reviews

Bobby. Dir. by Emilio Estevez. Prod. by Edward Bass, Michel Litvak, and Holly Wiersma. The Weinstein Company, Bold Films, and Holly Wiersma Productions, 2006. 120 mins. (http://www.bobby-the-movie.com/)
In the 1980s, the actor Emilio Estevez was a member of Hollywood's "brat pack," but in the new millennium his work is being reviewed in the august pages of the Journal of American History. With his film Bobby, Estevez attempts to re-create the America of June 5, 1968, the day Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Although he was only six years old when Kennedy was murdered, Estevez demonstrates considerable passion for the better world envisioned by the Kennedy presidential campaign of 1968. Estevez brings seriousness of purpose to this labor of love, which he wrote and directed, in addition to appearing in a small role.	1
But Bobby is not a traditional Hollywood historical or biographical film. Employing an ensemble cast of nearly two dozen well-known performers, including his father, Martin Sheen, Estevez depicts that fateful day for workers and guests at the Ambassador Hotel, the day that culminated in the Kennedy assassination. The impact of Kennedy's life and death on these fictitious, everyday citizens is what fascinates the filmmaker. For it is through Kennedy's sacrifice that their lives take on a larger meaning. Just as in 1968, Bobby becomes the lens through which we attempt to define our hopes and dreams.	2
This is a terrific burden for any politician or actor to carry, so Estevez uses video clips and news footage to portray Kennedy and his ideas. Estevez is not particularly interested in the motives of Kennedy's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan. Bobby conveys none of the filmmaker Oliver Stone's conspiracy theories regarding the American political assassinations of the 1960s. Instead, Estevez strives for what the film scholar Robert Rosenstone might call the "metaphorical truth" of Kennedy's 1968 campaign, arguing that Kennedy's vision offered an opportunity for Americans, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, to be guided by "the better angels of our nature."	. . .

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