This review was requested by Alexis Howland. Many thanks to Alexis for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.
Director: Tim Robbins
Writer: Tim Robbins
Cast: Tim Robbins, Giancarlo Esposito, Alan Rickman, Ray Wise, Brian Murray, Gore Vidal, Rebecca Jenkins, Harry Lennix, David Strathairn, James Spader, Helen Hunt, Jack Black, Susan Sarandon, John Cusack, Bob Balaban, Lynne Thigpen
Runtime: 102 mins.
1992
Bob Roberts begins in montage. Renowned businessman millionaire and folk singer Robert "Bob" Roberts has launched a campaign for the senate seat of Pennsylvania. At first a heavy underdog to the incumbent Democratic Senator Brickley Paiste (Gore Vidal), he has been blazing the campaign trail with concerts and photo ops specially designed to make his opponent look like an old fuddy duddy. Roberts is attractive, charismatic, and carries a message of freedom and self-determination. His music undergirds the montage as we get caught up in the fervor. It's exciting! It's fun! It's funny! Roberts is a ridiculous figure with many ridiculous figures wrapped around his finger, and the kinetic filmmaking of the first ten minutes replicates the passion that his campaign inspires.
Then it hits a wall. Roberts is interviewed for television by Kelly Noble (Lynne Thigpen), and it is here that the movie digs in. Their exchange is buffered by thinly veiled professionalism, but it's apparent that Kelly resents being within five feet of the conservative politician. She speaks her questions through gritted teeth and ghoulish smile. He answers with faux innocence and an easygoing victim complex. Kelly probes farther than she is supposed to, but Bob handles it all with infuriating grace. The cameras stop rolling and the Roberts retinue trails behind as Kelly storms for the exit. She stops to deliver a clear message to the only Black man in Roberts' entourage. "Hey brother, they make you check your skin at the door?" "Not all Black people need to think alike," he responds, and they both seethe for a moment more before she abandons him to his duties.
This bait and switch one of the many things Bob Roberts does so well. What was once a Tim Robbins character from SNL now has an entire mockumentary film built around him, and the film makes damn sure not to make the same sophomoric, pandering mistakes about politics that SNL does. Every time we believe we're having fun with this silly man and the silly things that he says, the film hammers home the dire consequences of populist rhetoric.
In a movie filled with white people and white people politics, the Black characters are the ones who cause rupture from the margins. Most important is Bugs Raplin (the legendary Giancarlo Esposito, all tics and boundless enthusiasm), an independent reporter who believes he has a lead that might bust this election wide open. You see, the Roberts campaign received a significant amount of money through their anti-drug charity Broken Dove; Raplin is within a hair's breadth of connecting that money with a CIA drug trafficking cover-up. He unravels this story and periodically shares his updates with the documentarian of the very movie we are watching, British filmmaker Terry Manchester (Brian Murray).
This comes to a head halfway through the film, when Roberts + security scramble through the catacombs of an old theater trying to find the stage in time for a public appearance. Raplin pursues them at first, barking his evidence and dowsing for any sort of response. This is filmed in an incredibly tense long take, the best shot of the film. Each wrong turn ratchets up the intensity, and as the intensity grows it feels less and less like Raplin is the pursuer, and more and more like he is being shepherded away from anyone who might overhear. They barrel through dressing rooms, hallways, multipurpose rooms, rehearsals, the noise of art and entertainment bracketing accusations of violence and malfeasance. For the first time, we see Roberts' mask begin to fall.
Bob Roberts contextualizes the footage of the titular politician's campaign with talking head interviews. These are sinister, chilly, impassioned monologues about the state of American politics, sharper in their critiques and deeper in their understandings than any I have ever seen spoken explicitly in a feature film. Kelly Noble and Bugs Raplin both have the opportunity to speak their piece, and their voices are joined by the opposition Brickley Paiste. Gore Vidal, notorious writer, historian, and political theorist, speaks at length about who really pulls the strings in America. Nestled within the government is the Department of Defense who, in concert with corporate interests and arms manufacturers, make all the decisions in America that matter. These men and women are not even elected. Vidal-as-Paiste speaks truth to power in these improvised segments, connecting the dots that form the picture of our military industrial complex in a searing way that I don't believe any sitting Democrat could or would do.
As implausible as the 'Democratic Senator who tells us the truth about what's going on' is, it works wonders for the dramatic tension. The further we get into Bob Roberts, the less amused we are. Writer/Director/Lead Tim Robbins does an incredible job of balancing tones, winding comedy and tragedy tighter and tighter until every laugh feels like a choke. What begins as a character study expands gradually into a moratorium on an entire nation, and the deeper we go into the rabbit hole the more it feels like freefall.
Perhaps even more impressive than nailing the description of the dark money that runs America is this film's demonstration of the very thing that Republicans understand to their core but Democrats can't seem to grasp: enjoyment. Through a bevy of interviews with Roberts supporters (including a young Jack Black!), we see that people don't vote for Bob Roberts because his policies are logical. They don't attend rallies because they are hoping to learn something new about the state of America. They flock around Roberts because he is entertaining, and more specifically, because he is a predator of desire. He allows his fans to fantasize, he exploits wish fulfillment, he repeats over and over again that America is a country of freedom, and freedom means that you can simply decide to be rich. No matter how much levelheaded pragmatism Brickley Paiste advocates for, the people will always vote for the candidate who enables them to have a good time.
Enjoyment is the greatest tool of modern electoral politics, and with this insight Bob Roberts presages our current global collapse into fascism. The Right has always been adept at instilling the pleasure of hatred, the thrill of scapegoating, the titillation of 'owning the libs.' This film has a dark view of the prospects for the Left if it is not able to weaponize enjoyment in its own way, without the concomitant ethical violences.
It makes perfect sense that the movie ends with Bob Roberts using a staged piece of hate-fueled theatricality to pivot from a message of freedom to a message of fear. Those who watch this unfold with clear eyes can only watch, and those who take action are erased. Bob Roberts is America: folksy, handsome, genial, and monstrous to the core.
4 / 5 BLOBS
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