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April 16, 2007

Bobby

We don't recognize the days that shape our lives until the moment has passed. They're just days, like any other day, unless some unexpected something comes along with such overbearing force that a particular day becomes seared in our memory -- where we were, what we were doing -- and suddenly takes on an otherworldly significance.

Bobby is a film about such a day. What writer/director Emilio Estevez attempts to do here is present June 4, 1968 as just another day that happens to culminate with the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. It all takes place at the Ambassador Hotel, where Kennedy would be mortally wounded before the day's end, and focuses on the ordinary travails of staff members and guests at the Ambassador that fateful day. It's an ambitious, if uneven, effort that teeters between melodrama and significance.

At its worst, Bobby plays like a cross between The Love Boat and Crash. The ensemble cast, featuring Anthony Hopkins, Sharon Stone, William H. Macy, Lindsay Lohan, Harry Belafonte, Laurence Fishburne, Christian Slater, Elijah Wood, Demi Moore, Freddie Rodriguez, Ashton Kutcher, and a host of other rising and fading stars, often distracts from the intent of the film. Their substories are mostly banal -- the alcoholic diva (Demi Moore) and her cuckolded husband (Emilio Estevez), the philandering hotel manager (Macy) and his silently suffering hairdresser wife (Stone), the reminiscing hotel retirees (Hopkins and Belafonte) -- and don't add to the weight to which the film strives. They serve more as counterpoint to the more interesting stories interspersed with them. Lindsay Lohan is surprisingly good as an idealistic girl marrying Elijah Wood to keep him from having to serve in Vietnam. Martin Sheen and Helen Hunt portray aging liberal socialites representing the passing of more civilized culture, and the interaction between Fishburne and Rodriguez are quiet testaments to the evolving socio-racial awareness among minorities.

The first third of Bobby establishes all these characters and their stories, and it's a bit haphazard at first, more a game of "spot the star" than anything else. But as the film progresses, their stories intertwine in remarkably subtle ways that reflect the timbre of the times. Kennedy himself is more metaphor than character through most of the movie, with archival footage of him punctuating the film's main point of how a single moment can alter the shape of a society.

When it works -- which it mostly does, once the establishing sequences are out of the way -- Bobby is a compelling statement. Estevez doesn't dwell on conspiracy theories or political machinations. By taking the sociopolitical climate of 1968 and viewing it through the eyes of people unaware they were microcosms of the upheaval taking place all around them, he makes the assassination of Robert Kennedy deeply personal and moving. When he was killed, the dreams of many Americans for a more tolerant society were all but shattered. Yet, the senselessness of it, coming so soon after the assassination of Martin Luther King, united us in some ways, if even for a short time.

As a film, Bobby sometimes overreaches its ambitions. But as a snapshot of American life and how we viewed ourselves on the day that RFK was shot, it's a powerful achievement. The DVD release has special features that enhance its significance, including a "making of" documentary and eyewitness accounts by people who were there the night it happened. It's not a masterpiece, but it is a movie that stands repeating viewings.

To comment on this and more reviews go to Blogcritics.org.

Posted by lmckay at 10:09 PM

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I don’t ever really remember not having the Internet. When working at my day job, I find myself emailing co-workers in other states rather than calling them. It’s my first impulse when I want to communicate, though the older coworkers prefer phone.

I’d recommend Four Eyed Monsters to them for two reasons. First, it’s a damn fine film, intimate and funny. Second, it’s a film so aware of life in the digital age that it, more than any other film I’ve seen on the subject, illuminates the personality behind the impersonal nature of 21st century communication.

The film follows the introverted videographer named Arin (Arin Crumley), who has more to offer in lust than he does in ambition. He spends his days ogling women on the streets and sending messages to girls on social networking websites hoping for a cyber connection. After hundreds of outgoing messages, one from Susan (Susan Brice) finally arrives in his inbox.

The two end up engaging in a peculiar but effective relationship where neither person directly talks to the other. Through notes on paper or video messages, the two form a connection that frees them to create the movie we are watching.

That last sentence makes the film appear more experimental than it really is. While Four Eyed Monsters is an avant-garde, uber-modern romance, it’s still a romance, earnest and affecting. The co-directors Crumley and Brice (also the stars) have big things to say here, but they say it with a passion that makes me think their lives truly depended on this film.

Maybe I’m confusing the characters with the filmmakers, but Four Eyed Monsters is personal, bordering on exhibitionistic. I don’t recall any film committing so much energy to understanding the casual cyber communication, while immersing itself so deeply in it. More importantly, the film succeeds without outright indictment or support of the medium.

I do have one concern. I worry about filmmakers whose first features are visionary works with shoestring budgets. Coming from someone who loves very indie films, I can tell you that few of the filmmakers behind those films make it to the next level.

Four Eyed Monsters may have an advantage as a film nominated, deservedly so, for IFP’s John Cassavetes Award, as well as one featured in the New York Times. There are eyes on Four Eyed Monsters, which is something quite rare.

Of course, Four Eyed Monsters didn’t have even a minor theatrical run and is only available on DVD through the film’s website. It’s appropriate, however, for Four Eyed Monsters to get its major push through the web and not traditional distribution channels. That’s part of the experience. Hopefully even my analog colleagues can appreciate that.

DVD Extra Features:

Bobby

Four Eyed Monsters

Super Troopers