Bobby

A film set in a Los Angeles hotel. The date is 4 June 1968. It is a primary night at the Ambassador Hotel. Robert Kennedy will win the California primary and speak that night. The film follows that day. But it does not follow Kennedy. The narrative follows the people who work at the hotel and happen to be there. There are more than twenty characters. A retired doorman plays chess in the lobby. The hotel manager is unfaithful to his wife. There are two Mexican workers in the kitchen. One wants to go to a game that night and is put on a double shift. A cook talks to them. He is Black and understands the discrimination the two young men meet. A campaign volunteer takes drugs. A singer is to perform and is fighting with her husband. A young couple decide to marry so he will not be drafted. A beauty salon, a bar, a kitchen and a ballroom. From there the film runs these lines in parallel and none is larger than the others. Real archive footage cuts in. Kennedy's speeches and the news of that year. Vietnam, segregation, poverty and two assassinations. What the narrative is interested in is not an assassination but a cross-section: its idea is that the night gathered a country into one building and that nobody knew what would happen a few hours later. The night goes on. The results come. Kennedy wins. He makes his speech and walks through the kitchen. The last section lasts a few minutes and the narrative gathers all its characters in the same place there. A speech of Kennedy's is heard at the close. Emilio Estevez wrote and directed; his father Martin Sheen is in the cast. The cast is very large and many known names are in small parts. Anthony Hopkins, Harry Belafonte, William H. Macy, Sharon Stone, Demi Moore, Laurence Fishburne and Freddy Rodríguez are in it. Who it is for: anyone who likes multi-character structures and American political history. Who it is not for: anyone looking for depth; the cast is too large and no line develops enough.