Film Review
The blackest, and almost certainly greatest, black comedy of them all,
Dr Strangelove thinks the
unthinkable and achieves the impossible, finding humour in the prospect
of global thermonuclear annihilation.
Doubtless the film had its greatest impact when it was first released, just after the Cuban
Missile Crisis at the height of the Cold War in 1962, the closest that
mankind has so far come to blowing up the planet. Yet the film
continues to have a powerful resonance and offers a compelling
and strangely unsettling viewer experience. The Cold War may have ended, but the possibility of
us all going up in a cloud of radioactive smoke remains a chillingly
realistic outcome, particularly as an increasing number of nations
are lining up to join to the nuclear club.
Dr Strangelove is not only a
brilliant satire on Cold War hysteria and lunatic militaristic
posturing (here the war-lust is rightly represented as just another facet of the
suppressed male libido), it also pinpoints the one fundamental flaw in
the much-vaunted strategy of mutually assured destruction (referred to
by those in the know as M.A.D. and by everyone else as
mad), namely that no system,
however well designed, is foolproof.
If a nuclear weapon goes off
in the next century and triggers a holocaust that will wipe us all
out, it will most likely be down to what Microsoft would term an
undocumented feature.
Dr Strangelove marked a new
high for Stanley Kubrick. Although the director had made a number
of significant films prior to this, including his earlier anti-war
drama
Paths of Glory (1957)
and a superlative adaptation of Nabokov's
Lolita (1962), this was his first
great auteur piece, the beginning of his run of cinematic triumphs that
would include
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968),
A Clockwork Orange (1971),
Barry Lyndon (1975) and
The
Shining (1980).
Not only is
Dr Strangelove a
supremely funny film that
offers the most cogent argument for the outlawing of nuclear weapons,
it is also a stunningly crafted piece of cinema. Kubrick knew
instinctively how to construct a visual image that would deliver the
greatest impact, emotionally and intellectually, and this is apparent
throughout this film. Note the contrast between the static,
almost unreal scenes in the War Room and the almost documentary realism
in the cockpit scenes and the sequences where the airbase is attacked,
achieved through innovative use of handheld camera. The political
and military leaders are, as always, completely detached from the
reality of the ludicrous situation they have created. Like the
other great cineastes, notably D.W. Griffith, Sergei Eisenstein and
Alfred Hitchcock, Kubrick understood that images, not spoken words, are
the means by which the true filmmaker communicates with his
audience. Words are just window-dressing.
With Peter Sellers cast in not one but three roles, all played to
perfection, the film could hardly fail to be a comic masterpiece.
In their contract with Kubrick, Columbia Pictures had stipulated that
Sellers would play
four
roles, but the actor was reluctant to play Major Kong and,
after he sustained a minor injury, the part was given to Slim Pickens,
who is an admirable replacement. Whilst Sellers dominates
this film, reaching new heights of hilarity as the deranged Dr Strangelove, there
are some memorable contributions from his co-stars. George C.
Scott almost steals the show as the military man who sees all-out war
as the solution to every problem and Sterling Hayden is frighteningly
convincing as the general whose paranoid aversion to fluoride in
tap water drives him to light the blue touch paper. And who can forget the sight of
Pickens riding astride the atom bomb as it falls to Earth, unleashing a truly
horrifying blast of Vera Lynn? A propos, any resemblance between
the mad Texan cowboy who can't wait to nuke his opponents and a future
president of the United States is purely coincidental...
© James Travers 2009
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Stanley Kubrick film:
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Film Synopsis
Convinced that the Communists are infiltrating his country, General
Jack D. Ripper, the commander of a US military airbase, gives the order
for a bomber wing to launch a first strike nuclear attack on the
USSR. Ripper's executive officer, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake,
quickly realises that the general has lost his marbles and desperately
tries to get out of him the three-letter code that will recall the
bombers before they reach their target. Meanwhile, in the War
Room of the Pentagon, President Merkin Muffley chairs a crisis meeting
with military leaders and advisors, who include the belligerent General
Buck Turgidson and wheelchair-bound scientist Dr Strangelove.
Turgidson argues that the best option is to proceed with an all-out
unprovoked nuclear assault on the USSR, thereby reducing the number of
American casualties to a mere twenty million or so. Perhaps worried
by the effect this might have on his approval rating, Muffley decides on a
different tack and tries to persuade the Soviet Premier to shoot down the
attacking aircraft. The President is aghast when he learns
that the Soviets have built a Doomsday Machine, which will be triggered
in the event of a nuclear strike on the USSR. Once activated,
this device will release a radioactive cloud that will wipe out all
human and animal life on the surface of the Earth. Surely the
combined resources and intelligence of the American and Soviet
superpowers can avert this calamity...?
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.