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by Jordan Hiller

A Love Song for Bobby Long

I’ve never been to New Orleans on our southern border, so bayou is really just a word to me and Bourbon Street, Mardi Gras, they’re just sweat glistening drunken concepts. If I never get to New Orleans, never have a good Louisiana downpour drench me to the bone on a summer day where the humidity hangs like a blanket, Shainee Gabel’s Love Song for Bobby Long may be the closest I’ll ever get…and that’s pretty darn close.

If you want my vote for the most unassuming, unexpectedly breathtaking film of the year with Oscar caliber performances all around, try this confident but modest gem as it broke through the clouds like a majestic sunset on display just before 2004 melted into the horizon.

John Travolta, as Bobby Long, finally makes his first wise acting decision since Phenomenon and delivers in a role that his him gray, haggard, and deliciously crotchety. He is a dishonored professor of English who quotes the masters as if they frequent his tongue while his existence is that of a bum in a hovel, living with his aging protégé (movie star in the making Gabriel Macht). The plot revolves around Travolta’s small New Orleans town and the local agrarian philosophers that feed off his energy and wisdom, all while being repulsed by his nature. The town, and especially Travolta , are shaken when a beloved member of the group dies and her long estranged daughter (lovely, talented Scarlett Johansson) returns to pay respects and spend some time in her mothers home, which happens to be where Travolta and Macht are squatting.

The beauty of the film is that there is no real plot device beyond what brings Johansson to the town. There is no great hurdle to overcome, plan to foil, or enemy to battle. This love song knows it’s a winner and is pleased as punch to allow the audience to breathe in the blue skies, wade through the overgrown gardens, and sway to the jazz of brass bands soothing the night. At the same time, we get to enjoy the entirely unpretentious deteriorating relationship between Bobby, a man who has built walls and wall around those, and Macht, who is supposed to write a great novel about Bobby, and the blossoming relationships that occur once Johansson brightens everyone’s day. For the mostly male group, it is as if her mother has been resurrected, and for them it is like a pleasant agony.

From there, like the Black River, the film just flows. Just flows like a grand old river; cutting here, twisting there, and eroding the earth, bubbling, gurgling, zipping along, slowing to a crawl, and winding finally to a brilliant, pride swollen sea.