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Bob Roberts: A Tim Robbins film
(1992)
by Arthur Durkee
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Movie critic Gene Siskel asked writer/director Tim Robbins what his favorite film of all time was. Without even hesitating, Robbins evoked Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap. Robbins is responsible for creating the most brilliant political and social satire I have seen since Spinal Tap or Nashville. The audience at the theatre was deeply involved with the film, cheering at moments (the end of the “Saturday Night Live” parody scene), laughing uproariously, and terribly silent during the film’s darker moments.
The film is styled as a mock-documentary, and begins as a cool BBC/PBS-style profile narrated by British reporter Terry Manchester (Brian Murray), who is the voiceover for the searching, see-everything eye of his unseen cameraman, Nigel. The camera work throughout the film is breathtaking, including a number of long, seamless single takes, and interview shots that utilize telling reflections in objects near the interviewee.
The title character, Bob Roberts (Robbins), is a self-styled “rebel reactionary” folk-song sensation. The film ostensibly documents his candidacy for a Pennsylvania Senate seat against incumbent liberal Democrat Brickley Paiste, played in a brilliant casting move by writer Gore Vidal. Also taking a star turn is Giancarlo Esposito as a left-wing investigative reporter who dogs Bob’s campaign, continually trying to crack Bob’s slick shell with accusations of misconduct, and whose character is ultimately, compellingly tragic. That everything he tells us about Roberts, no matter how bizarre it sounds, seems to come true, is part of the tragedy.
The resulting portrait of Bob is an enigma: a race-baiting, greed-placating, condescending political machine whose slickness seemingly conceals a void: under the slick, smiling exterior, there’s no one visibly home. His top aides are a creepy ex-CIA spook (Alan Rickman) who only shows emotion in calculated political moves, and a PR man (Ray Wise) whose shark-like smile never evaporates under any provocation.
My favorite moments in the film were the musical ones: both the “live” performances before a crowd of hypnotized masses, and the two MTV video parodies. The first is a conscious parody of Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” with Bob (and Bob) standing in an alleyway revealing the lyrics on throw-away cue cards. There’s also a Robert Palmeresque dancing girl troupe. The second video clip owes a vicious debt to Pink Floyd, this time with the hordes of Wall Street suits rising from their battlefield graves. Satires within a satire, these mock music videos provide telling cuts at numerous sacred cows.
Tim Robbins has gone straight for the gut of what’s wrong with contemporary sleaze politics. He doesn’t pull punches, but as a filmmaker he hasn’t let his anger destroy his sense of absurdist irony. His direction is refreshingly complex, and he co-wrote all the songs, too. Bob Roberts is the best film I’ve seen this year, bar none.
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