Estevez's Bobby is a Structural and Emotional Achievement

Bobby is the best movie I've seen thus far this year. Bobby may be the best movie I've seen in several years. It's that good, and Emilio Estevez directed it - who knew?

Bobby is not a biopic of Bobby Kennedy, rather it's a day in the life of the Ambassador Hotel on the day he was shot. We've seen movies like this before - ensemble casts, disparate stories that come together (the master of this being the recently deceased Robert Altman), but Bobby stands out, and not just for the subject matter.

Why?

First, Bobby is not too neat. All the stories don't converge, strictly speaking. Not everything is resolved and each seperate little drama doesn't get a happy ending in spite of the tragedy of the night (i.e., the girl who prays her angry parents come to her wedding anyway? They don't. The guy who really wants to take his dad to a ball game? Can't get off work.) This gives Bobby realness and weight instead of diminishing its tale through too much cuteness or synchronicity.

Second, the pacing is atonishing. Bobby never, ever drags and yet feels like an exhilerating four hours, eventhough it's over in less than two.

Third, performances and casting. Perfection.

Four, Bobby Kennedy as himself. Other than an actor we see once or twice from the back or out of focus, all RFK moments are from historical footage. And it never feels like it was a struggle to construct Bobby this way - there was plenty of material, just the right material.

Five, race. Bobby makes no effort to make the racial tensions and reoslutions of the time more palatable to the modern audience. What is hopeful is also uncomfortable, both in the contructed parts of the film and in the historical footage.

Six, while being a movie about the end of things, about things dying, Bobby makes a distinction between losses than are good and losses that are bad, thus naturalizing death and making the story of the film seem both bigger and smaller than it is. How can a film that ends in gunshots be so gentle?

Seven, Bobby knows good writing when it sees/hears it and to get these massive chunks of RFK speeches, completely organically woven into the film is just amazing. As someone who has never particularly dwelled on or been interested in the sixties, this changed my mind about those feelings, and shocked me - hearing such simple human messages about what it is to be human, to be comrades in arms, to be brothers. It makes all the firebreathing religious insanity of my lifetime seem even more bizarre. Don't these people hear themselves?

Eight, Bobby recognizes that even in a film about a great man, somtimes the great symbolism of a moment belongs to the ordinary and the unknown. There's this incredible scene that happens between Lawrence Fishburne's character and Freddy Rodriguez's about "The Once and Future King" which is so fantastic I can't even describe it.

I literally cried nonstop for the last 30 minutes of Bobby. It should get both a best picture nomination and a best director nod.

If you see one movie this year, Bobby should probably be it.