Cousin Bobby

Director: Jonathan Demme
Year: 1992
Country: USA
Running time: 69 mins
USA
Production Co: Tesauro
Producer: Edward Saxon
Photography: Ernest Dickerson, Craig Haagenson, Tony Jannelli, Jacek Laskus, Declan Quinn
Editor: David Greenwald
Optical effects: Eastern Optical Effects
Sound design: C-5
Sound recordists: Judy karp, J.T Takagi, Pam Yates
Music: Anton Sanko
Songs: Blackman in Effect, perf by KRS-I; Brother Man, perf by Poor Righteous Teachers; My Father's Footsteps, perf by Butch Robins
Jonathon Demme’s film about his cousin Robert Castle, an Episcopal priest who works in Harlem, has a loose, friendly, home-movie quality that’s weird but appealing. Bobby is a chunky, balding, sixtyish priest who leads his poor parishioners on protest marches, delivers fiery speeches on the evils of racism, and generally stirs things up, sixties style, on behalf of the disadvantaged, the neglected and the oppressed. In his strolling conversation with his cousin Jonathon, who he hasn’t seen in more that thirty years, he keeps veering off from leisurely family anecdotes into rapid-fire sermons, and the movie does its best to follow the erratic, distracted rhythm of his discourse…

After a while, we realise that Demme’s offhand, incredibly casual approach is drawing us into an unusual kind of intimacy with Bobby and the ravaged urban world we live in. The movie wants us to get to know Bobby just as his cousin did, and it tries to produce the odd, intermittent nature of developing friendship – a process that in this case also includes a full, felt understanding of the priest’s political ideas.

For all it surface nonchalance, Cousin Bobby is a brilliantly original portrait of a complex personality; it does justice to both the continuities and the discontinuities of its subject’s life story. Demme, who is onscreen a fair amount, acts as a genial, low-pressure host; his manner is an invitation to the audience to join in the family feeling that’s growing between him and his cousin. And once we’re all hanging out together, Bobby’s fierce vision of community really takes hold of our imagination. The film ends up a lovely, amiably persuasive demonstration of the personal sources of political conviction. - Terence Rafferty, New Yorker, 1/6/92