Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

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Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) – S. Kubrick

Watching this masterpiece again after a few years, I’d forgotten how brisk and suspenseful it is -- but its audaciousness can never fade.  Stanley Kubrick (and writer Terry Southern) took a nuclear panic thriller and turned it into a comic satire – but the underlying reality of “our life with the bomb” keeps terror and dread and sadness and shock only barely at bay; the comedy is a fig leaf on our existential horror.  The plot is straightforward:  General Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden) goes off his rocker and orders a nuclear strike on the USSR from the wing of B-52 bombers flying just two hours from their targets.  Although Group Captain Mandrake (Peter Sellers), an RAF officer serving as his executive officer tries to talk him out of it, he just gets nonsense about fluoridisation and precious bodily fluids in return. When General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott), Commander of the Joint Chiefs, finds out, he heads to the War Room to confer with President Merkin Muffley (also Peter Sellers).  In the meantime, we focus on one plane, piloted by Major “King” Kong (Slim Perkins) that is steadily making its way to the target. In fact, once Attack Code R has been triggered they can’t be contacted (except with a special code) and can’t turn back.  You can see the lines of the thriller plot here:  Muffley calls in the Soviet Ambassador and gets the Premier on the line but they soon discover that the Russians have invented a Doomsday Machine that will automatically trigger in the event of an attack and shroud the world in radiation for 93 years.  Muffley’s advisor Dr Strangelove (a former Nazi, also played by Peter Sellers) offers not so reassuring advice about living underground (and developing a new world order).  It’s all played for laughs, broad ones.  Who can forget that shot of Slim Pickens riding the bomb like a bucking bronco to its destination and the final shots of mushroom clouds played off to the strains of “We’ll Meet Again”? It’s all so pitch perfect and sadly, it can never become dated.  I guess we’ll have to laugh to keep from crying (now it’s anyone’s guess whether global warming or nuclear destruction will get us first!).