#27: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

In the height of the Cold War, tensions run high and eventually something snaps.  Deeply unstable General Jack D. Ripper gives the order to the US Air Force to drop the hydrogen bomb on Russian targets, setting off a frenzied chain of events as both the United States and the USSR realize the horror of their impending doom through mutually assured destruction.  Meanwhile, the intrepid crew of one B-52 aircraft, under the command of Major T.J. "King" Kong, head toward their target, determined to serve their country despite any setbacks.

Director Stanley Kubrick originally planned to create a serious, sober adaptation of the Cold War thriller novel Red Alert, but while putting together plans to make the film began to see through to the absurdity inherent in the nuclear scare, and instead created the bizarre, off-the-wall satire that is Dr. Strangelove.  Kubrick was living in England at the time, and the influence of British comedy shows through clearly, albeit dissolved somewhat in American cultural themes.  Dr. Strangelove - except for "King" Kong's perfect, climactic exit near the end of the film - is a movie without punchlines, just an ever-creeping horror that continually builds even as the credits roll.

Oh, and it's funny, too.  The acting (by Peter Sellers in three roles including the titular mad scientist, Slim Pickens as Major Kong the Texan, George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson, and a myriad of other skilled actors playing characters with punnish names) is spot-on and just barely over-the-top, not ridiculous enough to go flat.  The script's inside jokes and one-liners are perfectly timed.  And somehow in showing the extent of the madness that results from Armageddon, Kubrick brings the end of the world down to a level where it can be ridiculed.

I imagine that as a member of Gen Y, and someone who hasn't watched a great deal of war movies, to some extent the jokes went over my head.  Dr. Strangelove does still work today as a comedy but only when observed from a historical context; while we still see this trigger-happy paranoia in the post-9/11 world, schoolchildren are no longer watching 'duck and cover' videos, Europe is no longer a foreign wilderness, and most people alive today don't remember World War II.  Yet Kubrick is an artist - and even at those moments when the tension goes slack (because we've all come out on the other end of the Cold War) this film can be enjoyed for the beauty of its shots, the use of light and shadow, and the way Kubrick and his actors work together to portray the darkest depths of the human psyche.

...No, really, this is a comedy, I promise!