bobby

Bobby: Showtime's expiration date made me sit and finally watch the whole thing from beginning to end. It fictionally examines the day of Bobby Kennedy's assassination as a seemingly "normal" day of the others who were also shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel. I think it doesn't just show us what was "normal" but maybe what mattered. A young girl willing to marry a boy she knew from high school so that he would only be sent to Germany rather than to the front lines in Vietnam; a wealthy New York couple caught up in meaningless words and activities trying to find one another again; two college volunteers who opt to drop and "create a relationship with God" rather than knock on doors; the hotel manager caught in a just-ended affair by his wife who believes they are so above this situation; a Mexican teenager stuck working a double shift in the kitchen who is dying to go to take his father to see his baseball hero make history; a celebrity caught in the downward spiral; two old men confronting their own mortality.

Just a ordinary day that changed the lives of the people in this nation. What would we be like had JFK not been assassinated? Or if he had and Bobby lived? Would we be talking about a historic election of an African American today?

Emilio Estevez blends television footage and personal film with his actors to give the most realistic portrayal of the events. Bobby Kennedy's voice over gives power to his words of social justice, makes us realise the ideals we lost in the second public death in the Kennedy family. Hearing his words brought me to tears, much like the day I spent at the Book Depository in Dallas about ten years ago. I cried for their family. I cried for our country. I cried for the hope people lost. I cried for what my life could have been like, what my country could have been like. I cried because I wish the feelings in my heart, the equality I wish for my peers, the love our world needs to heal may never come to pass.

EE took years to complete the project - the guest star cast is pretty impressive, yet not completely convincing. The movie isn't the greatest, I think it drips with nostalgia and some of the story lines push the edge, but the film made me feel, which I can't say happens very often these days.