"Bobby" brings you back (if you were ever there) to the 60s, when those who protested the Vietnam War and racial injustice were motivated from their heart and torn by anger and grief in their efforts to change both. Yes the ensemble characters in the film are quite ordinary and their (sometimes) tawdry or pathetic shortcomings all too obvious and easy to sneer at, yet who could not recognize themselves in one or more of these vignettes. Robert Kennedy's assassination was felt by those who cared about him or his mission to the presidency as a deep wound to our own vision of a more compassionate and just America. The pettiness and simplicity of the characters in this movie are expertly directed to reveal our own pettiness and let us identify with them, if not consciously, then unconsciously. Remember, the top Hollywood actors in this movie were paid basic union scale (virtually free for them) so this was made for love. Our own little soap operas are put into such deep perspective that when he is killed, so were we, or at least the film lets you feel that. You find yourself loving this man, Robert Kennedy, for what he stood for and what he said during his candidacy, which is brilliantly threaded throughout the movie in his own words. The humanity you discover in him is of course your own humanity and isn't it refreshing to cry for yourself and your lost dreams as you cry for his.
