The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, just a few months after that of Martin Luther King Jr. and within five years of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, was the nail in the coffin for American social progress and change – at least, that’s what Emilio Estevez posits as the driving force behind “”Bobby,”” the largest film task he’s ever come close to taking on. The film is neither a historical analysis nor a psychological drama like “”JFK,”” but instead personally follows the lives of 22 different characters at the Ambassador Hotel leading up to the instant that Kennedy was shot in the hotel’s kitchen.
Elijah Wood and Lindsay Lohan co-star in Emilio Estevez’s tribute to the late Robert F. Kennedy as part of a cast comprised largely of actors too young to have witnessed the event.
“”From June 5, 1968, and on, it seemed we became more and more cynical and resigned – I think it’s a big part of why we are where we’re at culturally today,”” Estevez said. “”It’s heartbreaking.”” The historical events following Robert Kennedy’s death do seem to support this theory: The Democratic convention repressed anti-war sentiments, Nixon was elected, the war spread to Cambodia, student protesters were shot to death by the National Guard and napalm continued to rain on southeast Asia.
The United States eventually pulled out of Vietnam, only to repeat almost identical acts 30 years later. The Democratic party repressed anti-Iraq-war sentiments, Bush was re-elected, the war is spreading to Iran and Lebanon and student protesters aren’t shot, just ignored. And worse than napalm, we now have Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib – all part of our war of terror, which legally allows the secret torture of any world citizen without a charge or trial, if somehow they’re implicated in endangering the “”freedom”” of Americans. It’s not much of a stretch to construct an argument for large-scale social regression.
The 22 hotel-linked characters that “”Bobby”” trails, ranging from a bellhop to a switchboard operator, are embodied by over a dozen big-name celebrities – Anthony Hopkins, Lindsay Lohan, Helen Hunt, Martin Sheen, Sharon Stone and Estevez ex Demi Moore, to name a few. Their narratives are all normal Hollywood drama, but the real beauty of the film can be found in the original performance of Robert Kennedy himself, in archival footage and recorded speeches woven flawlessly into the film. No actor could convey how articulate he was, how sincere he was in person or how he could make people flock to touch him on the street. It is moving – almost to tears – just to hear the man speak, even in 30-year-old documentary footage, in a voice so especially inspiring and majestic against the with-us-or-against-us caveman rhetoric of the current administration.
This film will be analyzed in two ways: by those who were alive during the assassination and by those – like me, and the vast majority of college students – who were not.
My father, 19 and, at the time, not old enough to vote, had been campaigning for Kennedy, much like some of the film’s characters. “”I felt powerless … only liberals with compassion and righteousness, it seemed, were murdered,”” my father said when I asked him how he was affected by the murder. Ideals were useless, it seemed, against the mindless violence of anti-liberals. There would be no one who could convince me that justice was obtainable through the political process. There would be no more Bobby Kennedys – our quota of inspiring social reformers had been exhausted.””
For his generation, seeing this film will be an homage, a tribute to a collective reckoning of the event, ending at the moment of Kennedy’s death but leaving the audience – swept in by the words of one of his most prolific speeches at its close – to ponder the political climate leading up to today.
Many of the stars in “”Bobby”” were born long after their characters, forced to merely imagine the shattering of national optimism by a gunshot. A few weeks ago, “”Bobby”” actors Shia LeBeouf and Brian Geraghty sat side by side in a downtown San Diego hotel, talking about the impact of the historical event on a new generation.
“”We’re not much farther from where we were then,”” LeBeouf said. “”In 30 years, we haven’t made much progress – we’re still in a fucking retarded war, you know, still losing people for no reason, still got hatred rolling around, racism is still alive.””
“”[Kennedy] was a courageous guy – he was selfless,”” Geraghty said. “”[Back then] a presidential candidate made contact with people out of non-selfish reasons.”” For those of us who only have Clinton and the Bushes for comparison, the film evokes an unfamiliar nostalgia for a hopeful time we didn’t know, a yearning for a leader who let his wall down and articulated the possibility of younger input into social change.
“”Why do [kids] vote for ‘American Idol’ more than they vote for the president? ‘Cause they see their results,”” LeBouf said. “”They call up and vote for Clay Aiken and see it go from 83 percent to 84 percent … with all this red tape, the Electoral College, kids feel like their vote doesn’t mean shit.””
I recall waiting in line two hours to vote for the first time in the governor recall election, only to hear the results announced from a TV set before I even dropped my ballot in the box.
“”Are you going to vote?”” I asked LeBeouf and Geraghty – the interview was, incidentally, on Election Day. “”As soon as we get out of here,”” they said.
Estevez’s film rekindles a shared latency, a wish to act, to voice something, to join someone – but not knowing quite what or where or who. Hopefully it can remind us of the possibility for personal and global justice, not solely regulated by government officials. As always, Kennedy put it best: “”Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.””
