In the immortal words of Michael Stipe, while the "end of the world as we know it" may be the last thing you'd expect to make for good fodder for comedy, in the case of Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb, the unlikely combination of the subject matter and genre ends up being the perfect vehicle for satirizing the inherently absurdly nature of the Cold War, resulting in one of the legendary director's greatest efforts, and my current favorite Comedy movie of all time, in a movie that somehow feels just as fresh and timely today as it did upon its release over half a century ago.
Its plot kicks off with American Air Force General Jack D. Ripper (yes, that's the character's actual name) suddenly ordering his planes to begin bombing the Soviet Union, in retaliation to a supposed attack by the enemy. However, after it's discovered that no such Soviet aggression has taken place, it's clear that the insane, "bodily fluids"-obsessed General actually ordered a pre-emptive strike in a bout of Commie-induced paranoia, as part of a ploy to force Washington's hand in completely wiping out the bad ol' USSR, lest the same fate befall the States when the Ruskies have to counter-attack in response to Ripper's act. And thus, a mad, international dash commences across military and government bureaucracies, in order to abort this act of worldwide suicide, and that's before even factoring in the existence of a secretive "Doomsday Machine" to complicate matters, and make this incredibly dire situation somehow even worse than it already was.
And I know that all sounds like super-heavy stuff, and to a certain extent it is, with the film partially serving as a time capsule of genuine, prodding insight into the policies and mindset of such a tense era, but Kub and company were still able to find joy in the destruction of the world, or at least recognized the insanity present within the Cold War and brought it to the surface, exchanging the serious tone of the source novel Red Alert for that of a satire, starting with little touches like a bomber pilot absent-mindedly reading a Playboy magazine in mid flight, and steadily escalating things from there, until the film climaxes with the now-iconic image of a man "riding" an atomic bomb all the way to its target like it's a bucking bronco, hooting, hollering, and waving his ten gallon cowboy hat all the while.
However, Strangelove not only has the nerve to mock the Cold War around a time when tensions between the two superpowers were at their highest, but also takes its razor-sharp aim at the leaders behind such "MAD" ideas, with the sight of a feckless American President fumbling his way through a one-sided phonecall with a drunk Soviet premier serving to pierce the veil of respectability that often shrouds such officials in real life, and revealing them to be silly, petty men obsessed with the size of their arsenals and the potential prospect of a "mindshaft gap", non-chalantly dismissing the prospect of casualty figures in the millions, in-between stopping to take personal calls from their secretary/lovers waiting for them at home.
Of course, the cast does a lot of the heavy lifting in that regard as well, with George C. Scott's manic General Turgidson, Slim Pickens being, well, Slim Pickens, or Peter Seller's brilliant trifecta of performances, including the titular character's demented grin, wacky "German" accent, and struggles with his seemingly possessed right hand serving to bring every character to vivid life here, and heighten the absurdity, while still somehow keeping things grounded enough to have some sort of relation to the grim reality it's satirizing. Add on top of all of that Gilbert Taylor's cinematography, which balances striking, in your face compositions (which are often in the characters' faces as well) with jarring zoom-ins and ahead-of-its-time handheld camerawork, which gives the film an immediacy that was often lacking in Hollywood at the time, and you get a Comedy of (world-ending) errors, ensuring that if you have to watch the end of human civilization, at least you'll be laughing your head off as you do so.
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