MOVIE REVIEW : Embracing ‘Cousin Bobby’

Jonathan Demme is one of the few American filmmakers who seems equally at home making dramatic features and documentaries. That’s because his approach to both forms is essentially the same: He’s so open to experience that his best movies are like embraces.

“Cousin Bobby” (Nuart) is a species of home-movie but Demme’s engaging even-handedness turns it into something more: It’s a home movie in which we are willingly drawn into the family and made to share their concerns. Jonathan’s cousin is the Rev. Robert Castle, a minister at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church on 126th Street in Harlem. The occasion of the film marked their first reunion in 30 years.

It’s difficult to believe that a filmmaker as activist as Demme would have fallen out of touch with someone like Castle; their growing rapport is the film’s emotional core. Castle first stirred things up in the ‘60s in Jersey City when his parish closely allied itself with the Black Panthers. (Castle speaks movingly of his relationship with the late Panther leader Isaiah Rowley, to whom the film is partially dedicated.) Arrested over the years for numerous civil disturbances, unable to continue his church work in Jersey because of official displeasure within the Diocese, he retreats for a time to Vermont to run a general store before returning to the ministry in Harlem.

Bull-necked and bald-pated, the 62-year-old Castle is shown rallying his parishioners against the ills of the community, from potholes in the streets to failing health services. His gruff, no-nonsense activism has a bellowing force that doesn’t jibe with the more sleekly designed cadences of current political speechifying. He seems like a throwback, not just to the ‘60s but to Depression-era orators as well.

At the same time Castle is aware of his situation as a white minister in a mostly poor black neighborhood. He’s careful to avoid seeming patronizing. And the parishioners whom we meet don’t appear to resent his presence, though it would have been interesting to meet a few who do. Castle’s social activism doesn’t translate to a religious activism: He embraces the Islam members of his community not because he wants to convert them but because he recognizes that they all need to work together. The religious impulse in Castle’s activism seems to be wholeheartedly ecumenical--at least for the downtrodden.

Demme tags along for most of the film (Times-rated Mature) without inserting himself into it in any big way. There are family reunion sequences that probably mean more to Demme than they do to us, and Castle himself never really opens up to the camera. This lack of openness is off-putting at first but fascinating, too. It’s a demonstration of how someone who gives out so much to others may not have much left over for himself. Castle seems closed off not just by rage but by something more troubling and subterranean.

Demme doesn’t attempt a psychological portrait of his cousin Bobby; his film is an act of adoration, and that accounts for its considerable charm--and also its chief limitation. Cousin Bobby is such a fascinating character that we want more from him than this movie can deliver. You walk out of it feeling like you want to see what a dramatist’s exploration of this character could do. Maybe from Demme himself?

‘Cousin Bobby’

A Tesauro, S.A. presentation. Director Jonathan Demme. Producer Edward Saxon. Cinematographers Ernest Dickerson, Craig Haagensen, Tony Jannelli, Jacek Laskus, Declan Quinn. Editor David Greenwald. Music Anton Sanko. Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes.

Times rated: Mature.