Film Review: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

PLOT:

A deranged US Air Force Colonel orders his B-52 bombers to launch nuclear attacks on several Russian targets. Upon learning of the situation, the US President together with numerous high-ranking military personnel desperately tries to stop the attacks to prevent the setting off of the Doomsday Weapon which automatically detonates once an attack is made on Russian territory.

REVIEW:

The real and palpable possibility of a global nuclear meltdown is not one topic to be treated as a joke- especially in the 1960s when the Cold War is just in its puberty and both Washington and Moscow are a misunderstanding away from destructing the planet.

What Stanley Kubrick did was to bestow hilarity on the Cold War saga and lit it up onscreen with tickling satire. The grip of the ensuing doom and the rising degree of desperation are never lost despite the unforgiving laughter the satire may cause every time it appears. It is at times safe to say that there are times in the film where laughter is a decision because one could not prioritize the emotions that the film asks of.

“Gentlemen, you can’t fight here! This is the War Room!” Peter Seller’s US President Merkin Muffley role uttered this quotable line when General Buck Turgidson, a gum-chewing loose cannon who often delivers his line as if he has agitated balls in need of some urgent scratching, tried to haul down the Russian ambassador while inside the war room of the Pentagon. The irony is blissfully blatant and incongruous situations like that of Peter Seller’s other character of General Lionel Mandrake asking Colonel Bat Guano to shoot the Coca-Cola vending machine and retrieve loose coins so he could call the President of the USA and inform him the secret code to recall the bombers is as childish as it gets but the viewers are well-aware that the call is of great importance to the survival of humanity.

The film is full of watered-down maturity. It does not degrade the importance of the plot, what Stanley Kubrick did was to tackle it with an honest view of the ridiculousness of such thing ever happening.

Really? Nuclear World War?