06 février 2007

Cinema: Bobby


Emilio Estevez comes back with an interesting film - Bobby - where he proves he has some directing skills. This half-documentary, half-fiction film shows the events up to and during the moment when democrat Senator Robert Kennedy was murdered on 5 June, 1968, at the Hotel Ambassador in California. The film is not a masterpiece but it's quite interesting. Estevez aimed to paint those years - the sixties - showing many different situations around different characters who directly or indirectly took part in the tragedy, some fictional others more real. In the beginning all the little different stories and the many characters seem a bit too complicated but Estevez is able to paint the atmosphere that might have been felt back then. The cast is a luxury one, with many well-known actors like Sharon Stone, Demi Moore (and beloved Ashton Kutcher), Martin Sheen, Anthony Hopkins, Harry Belafonte, Helen Hunt, William Macy and Estevez himself, among others, who contribute to the success of the film.
The film's importance lies more in its political aim, in showing a parallel between the situation in the USA today and the situation back in '68, of which it is nostalgic. Basically it shows how a political dream died when Bobby was killed, a dream of peace and a will to change the political situation in the USA. The difference with present day America is that there is no Kennedy to keep that dream alive today, and there is no idealism left these days anymore in the world. Some may find it too simplistic and too sugary but we need this type of films to remind us that things have been different and things can be different and that there's hope, despite all...
***/5

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