Irish Film Institute -WILD STRAWBERRIES: BOBBY

WILD STRAWBERRIES: BOBBY

Director: EMILIO ESTEVEZ

USA • 2006 • COLOUR • 120 MINUTES


WILD STRAWBERRIES IS OUR MONTHLY FILM CLUB FOR OLDER PEOPLE. SCREENINGS ARE FREE OF CHARGE BUT YOU MUST RESERVE A SEAT WELL IN ADVANCE. PRIORITY BOOKING IS GIVEN TO IFI MEMBERS. BOOKINGS CAN BE MADE BY RINGING 01 612 9407 OR 01 612 9415 OR BY EMAIL WILDSTRAWBERRIES@IRISHFILM.IE.
This month’s film will be Bobby, an ambitious labor of love from writer/director/star Emilio Estevez. Bobby attempts to distill the hope, anger, and confusion that gripped the U.S. at the end of the 60s, using the assassination of Senator Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in LA as a snapshot of the problems facing the country.
The hotel is a microcosm of class and race, with characters bouncing off each other until the violent conclusion. John Casey (Anthony Hopkins), a retired doorman engages his friend Nelson (Harry Belafonte) in chess and nostalgia in the Ambassador lobby. African-American head chef Edward (Laurence Fishburne) presides over a kitchen staffed primarily by Mexican Americans who are the victims of the racist restaurant manager, Timmons (Christian Slater). Timmons is reprimanded by hotel manager Paul Ebbers (William H. Macy), who is having an affair with a switchboard operator (Heather Graham) behind the back of his beautician wife (Sharon Stone). Meanwhile, a young Diane (Lindsay Lohan) prepares to marry her classmate, William (Elijah Wood), in order to save him from going to Vietnam, and two collegiate campaigners for Senator Kennedy remove their ties to take their first LSD trip, courtesy of a resident hippie drug dealer (Ashton Kutcher).
Despite the sheer volume of characters, Estevez is deft at making each plot thread convincing and involving and thoroughly adept at distilling Kennedy’s message and the time in which he fought to deliver it.

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