Real to Reel History

We just saw the DVD of the movie "Bobby" the other night, which was a quasi-fictional account of the events leading up to the assassination of Robert Kennedy just after he won the California Democratic presidential primary in 1968.

Emilio Estivez directed and had a role in the film, in which he assembled an all-star cast that included his father Martin Sheen, William H. Macy, Anthony Hopkins, Heather Graham and Sharon Stone. With the setting being the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, the movie tried for a Robert Altman-esque kind of narrative (minus the characters talking over each other). But "Bobby" stops in its tracks whenever the real Senator Kennedy appears in vintage news footage giving speeches and interacting with the voters, making it look like a retro campaign ad. Did Estivez want to make a movie or a documentary?

Robert Kennedy may have been a hero to liberals (and anyone else) who wanted to return to the days of his brother John Kennedy's presidency, and he might indeed have brought the country together in the turmoil of the 1960s had he lived to be president. But he had his faults. He once worked for Senator Joseph McCarthy during his anti-Communist witch hunt days. And as JFK's attorney general, RFK made many enemies as he went after organized crime figures and dithered while the civil rights movement turned violent.

As president, would RFK really have made any difference trying to end the war in Vietnam, and in easing racial tensions? We'll never know the answer to that one, because he died the same way his brother did, by way of the bullet. Sorry to spoil the ending, but even Hollywood can't put a happy face on history.
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A word about Lindsay Lohan, who appeared in the movie as a young woman who marries her boyfriend so he could avoid fighting in Vietnam: She may be best known these days as the out-of-control party girl who's currently in rehab. If Lohan's performances in "Bobby" and "A Prairie Home Companion" (Altman's last film) are any indication, she has a bright future ahead as an actress.