The Public (Emilio Estevez, 2018): USA

Reviewed by Anton Jacobsson, Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival 2018.

Emilio Estevez has done a lot in the film history. He has been around since the 1980s doing a lot of different stuff. He has acted in classics like the breakfast club (1985), he has appeared in episodes of 2 1/2 men. He has also directed films like Bobby (2006). But in The Public (2018) which he wrote and directed, he is also playing the main character.

The Public is a fictional film about a group of homeless people occupying the public library for a night for shelter and to not freeze to death in the extremely cold weather that has come to Cincinnati. We follow a librarian by the name of  Stuart Goodson which is played by Emilio Estevez. The homeless people comes in everyday to the Public to stay warm, read books, shave, or use the computers and every night they are the last to leave. So when a record cold comes in over town the homeless people occupies the top floor of the library and blocks the door. Later the cops are called to the scene and we get to follow both sides of this confliction. The police thinks about either they should go in and arrest them or just let them stay the night.

This film wants to show that the people occupying the library are humans just like everyone else. The film is a good way of showing the problem that a town like Cincinnati and the rest of the world has with homeless people. It is right in the time because this is a really big problem and Estevez uses strong characters to play this people and give them big roles in this film because its a film about them. When you watch this movie you really fall in love with the characters because they are so unique and interesting.

I really liked this film because it touches real life problems and shows it but it doesn’t get to overwhelming with information and someone telling you that you are doing wrong and you need to do something about the problem. It just gives a view of how it is but in a really comedic way which is makes the movie really entertaining to watch.