Film review by Kevin Patterson
Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb * * * * (out of four) NR, 1963 Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Written by Stanley Kubrick, Peter George, and Terry Southern. Starring Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens.
Well, I have to hand it to Stanley Kubrick: I never realized that nuclear war could be so funny. His 1963 classic "Dr. Strangelove" is not only a pointed satire of the Cold War but a hilariously entertaining black comedy as well.The political implications of the film were scary back then, and are perhaps even scarier today, when small-scale terrorist organizations have the chance to get their hands on nuclear materials. But the way in which the nuclear disaster unfolds is so comically bizarre that you can't help but laugh at the absurd irony of the situation.
The story, in a nutshell, is this: General Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden) goes insane and, convinced of a Communist conspiracy to pollute the American water supply, invokes an obscure rule of protocol that essentially allows him to order a full-scale nuclear attack on the Soviet Union and cuts off all communication with the U.S. government. The bewildered President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) and his advisors are then left to try to obtain the essential recall codes to call back the pilots, an objective made all the more necessary by the revelation that the Soviets now possess a Doomsday Machine which will set off enough nuclear warheads to wipe out the human race if their country is hit by a single missile.
As is often the case with stories revolving around political/military intrigue, "Dr. Strangelove" alternates between several different settings and groups of characters: the President, his advisors, and the Russian diplomats in the War Room; Ripper and his second-in-command, Captain Lionel Mandrake (Sellers again), at the army base as U.S. Army soldiers invade the base in search of the recall codes; and a fighter plane piloted by a goofy commander (Slim Pickens) who is determined to bomb something if it's the last thing he ever does (literally).
What makes "Dr. Strangelove" so much better than the typical political thriller, however, is the way in which the humor reinforces rather than undercuts the film's political commentary. The politicians, for example, resemble a bunch of ineffectual quibbling socialites more than anything else. President Muffley calls Soviet Premier Kissoff (who happens to be drunk), explaining that General Ripper "went and did a very funny thing," then learns about the Doomsday Machine, which Kissoff planned to announce the following Monday ("He likes surprises," explains the Russian ambassador). No sooner does he get off the phone to see the Russian ambassador about to get in a scuffle with General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott); he is, of course, outraged at this scandalous behavior - "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!"
The Americans eventually manage to call back most of the attacking planes, setting up the classic comedy-of-errors ending. No longer is the outcome hinging on the efforts of the American soldiers to obtain the codes from Ripper, or on those of the Soviet Air Force to intercept the American planes, but on ridiculously trivial coincidences. Mandrake, for example, only manages to relay the recall codes to the President after persuading Col. Bat Guano (who is convinced that Mandrake is a dangerous "pre-vert") to shoot the lock off of a soda machine in order to get some change to make a collect telephone call ("That's private property!" Guano protests at first). In the end, the battle boils down to whether or not Pickens, unaware that a recall order has been issued, can manually open the malfunctioning bomb-bay doors so as to drop the fatal nuclear missile on the Soviet mainland.
These absurdities are strangely appropriate for the film's satirical content. Somehow, it's scarier to imagine that the annihilation of the human race might hinge on an insane general hell-bent on counteracting Communist "fluoridation" of the water supply or on one pilot's struggle to get a door open than it is to consider any of the more conventional scenarios by which a nuclear war might start. Perhaps the greatest irony is that the Doomsday Machine, designed as the ultimate anti-nuclear defense (because no one would dare launch a nuclear attack and thus set it off), ends up causing destruction many times worse than the calamity it was meant to prevent.
"Dr. Strangelove," then, offers just as many sobering observations about human nature and society as some of Kubrick's other films (such as "A Clockwork Orange" and "Full Metal Jacket"), but it also has quite a bit of fun in doing so. Pointedly observant, mischievously entertaining, and all-around brilliant, this one is a true classic.
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