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He’s Alive! He’s Alive! | Virtual JFK imagines a world where Kennedy remains president and Johnson never takes power.

VIRTUAL JFK: VIETNAM IF KENNEDY HAD LIVED
Directed by Koji Masutani. Metro Cinema (Zeidler Hall, The Citadel). Fri-Tue, Apr 10-14.
***1/2

With a title as silly as Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived, Koji Masutani’s speculative documentary sounds more like a loopy, handwritten diatribe that ought to be stapled to a telephone pole beside those “Edmonton Questions 9/11” posters. In fact, it’s a modest, fascinating inquiry into Kennedy’s general presidential attitude toward war — and as Masutani shows, JFK was urged into military action on no fewer than six separate occasions between 1961 and 1963, and declined every single time.

From this, Masutani and his talking-head expert, James G. Blight, wonder what would have happened if soldier-happy Lyndon B. Johnson hadn’t taken charge after the assassination, and ... well, you can see where it goes from there. It’s a one-note conclusion, but the archival footage of JFK’s press conferences and phone transcripts leading up to it make the trip more than worthwhile.

In chronological order, here are Kennedy’s crises, each of which could have led to something like World War III: the Bay of Pigs fiasco, civil war in Laos, the raising of the Berlin Wall, and the Cuban missile crisis, with the growing destruction in Vietnam gathering ominously like storm clouds in the background the whole time.

As Blight repeats several times, it wasn’t that Kennedy was merely presented with the notion of going to war — it’s that every single of his top advisers insisted that military action was the only possible solution. To not fight back would be to appear weak to Khrushchev and the Soviets. (These advisers were veterans of an earlier generation of warfare, where the enemy was recognizable and victory clear-cut; Kennedy’s recognition of the changing face of diplomacy is one of the reasons he was seen, initially, as a young Ivy League softie.)

Still, six times out of six, Kennedy stuck to non-military strategies. Even during something like the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, when the U.S. was about to become the target of international ridicule, and a pack of ready Marines was in fact waiting to swoop in from mere miles off the Cuban coast, Kennedy saw how easily the stakes could be raised to a nuclear level, and he held off.

These case studies are fascinating — admittedly, I’m not enough of a Kennedy expert to assess the minutiae of some of Masutani’s case — but for my money, the best part of Virtual JFK is the extensive footage of Kennedy’s press conferences. While Masutani is clearly implying parallels between JFK and Obama, the latter is sorely outmatched here. After all, these were some of the tensest weeks in the entire 20th century, and there’s Kennedy, a bucket of charm, calmly explaining his actions in a way that’s intelligent and easily understandable, but which also manages to seem completely unrehearsed. It’s gorgeous, inspiring stuff.

And somehow, amidst it all, Kennedy’s press conferences always involve the room exploding with laughter. He makes time to expertly skewer his critics in the Senate, and breaks the tension following the Cuban missile crisis by cracking a joke about spending Christmas in Florida, just 90 miles north of the nuclear hotspot. Cool as a fucking cucumber.