It does not matter that noble political commentary is wedded to what we would call soap opera if it were not so wedded. But it is so wedded, and therefore all is ennobled. Robert Kennedy’s presence in this film lifts up everybody.

We cannot be unaware that any US president must uphold the status quo. But they can do it differently. As someone who is kicking himself for saying, in 2000, “Bush/Gore, there’s nothing in it—they are both servants of the greater powers,” I now have to admit that Gore would not have served his masters in the way Bush did. There can be no shrugging off this point any longer. If it isn’t clear from Bush vs Gore, it has to be clear that a Bobby Kennedy win over Richard Nixon would have made so much difference that it is almost painful to think about. And this is why the film Bobby has got to be seen: just to remind us what the world lost.

Would Robert Kennedy have been that much different? He would have compromised in various ways, no doubt; but I always think of the Cuban missile crisis when a roomful of chiefs of staff were shouting for pre-emptive bombing of Cuba and Robert Kennedy, after they had quietened down, said “We don’t do that.”

Americans have since then become very capable of doing things Robert Kennedy said they don’t do. They thirst for a new leader who will simply say, “We don’t do that.”

We shall never know what Robert Kennedy might have refused to do. They didn’t even wait until he was elected, they apparently so feared that he might not serve his masters at all. As I watch him on the screen, I feel that they had great reason to fear.

I’m assuming it was a planned assassination by powerful interests who had too much to lose. Sirhan Sirhan, brain-washed, probably did not shoot anybody, maybe a few bystanders. I had occasion to see the security that always surrounded Bobby, being to the rear of the podium once when he gave a speech. It’s clear in the film too. When he was in a crowd, he always had a bodyguard literally holding him by the belt. If anybody was going to do it, it would be that bodyguard. I believe it was, and the full story will probably never be told. This film doesn’t touch that side of it, and therefore may disappoint.

Yet don’t be disappointed. We know who killed him: people who preferred Nixon. But knowing that doesn’t seem to get one anywhere. Nowhere compared with where the film Bobby does take us, which is, to know what it was like to be in touch with hope.