Bobby

What makes this incredibly fascinating as a movie are those times n which we lived. In some ways Bobby should be coupled for a night of viewing with a documentary, One Bright Shining Moment. They both cover the Democratic presidential campaign 0f 1968. In Bobby, the lives of 22 people come together at the Ambassador Hotel on June 6, 1968 when RFK is assassinated. Interesting way to tell a story with a great cast of actors. Emilio Estevez wrote, directed and is also in the movie.

What this movie did for me is the same thing that One Bright Shining Moment did: make me wonder what would have happened if Eugene McCarthy or Bobby Kennedy had won the presidency. Well, we know what did happen. Nixon won and it was business as usual.

For me, the fascination is with the political process. The acceptance that the process is not somewhat corrupted is naive in my view. With politicians, to include the Presidency, there's always a taint of, if not corruption, then compromise. Still, presidents send us off to war and that alone makes who is president very important. There's a scene in Bobby where we are looking at an actual protest march and the signs indicate at that time, only 8000, have been killed in Vietnam. Eventually it was 58,000.

The movie uses actual archival footing of the times and actual speeches by Bobby Kennedy.

The 22 whose stories make up much of the movie really aren't strangers rather archetypes--their stories intersect at the Ambassador Hotel. In light of our political season, this movie should be a must watch for Americans who care.