[Black Comedy] Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb [Impressions & Review]
Hello!
Today I thought I’d review Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb!
Contents
Story
It comes with a note saying “this film is fiction and could not happen in reality”.
At the height of the Cold War, with the United States and the Soviet Union bitterly opposed, General Jack D. Ripper, a fiercely anti-communist US Air Force officer, takes it upon himself to order the B-52 bomber wing under his command to launch a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. The US government and the military chiefs immediately sit down to work out a response, the Soviet ambassador invited in as well, but the code to cancel the bombing order is known only to General Ripper himself. On top of that, it emerges that the Soviets have prepared a retaliatory weapon called the “Doomsday Machine”, which triggers fully automatically in response to a nuclear attack. Once it goes off, an enormous quantity of radioactive material is scattered across the entire world, and every living thing on Earth, humanity included, dies out.
— Pixiv Encyclopedia
https://dic.pixiv.net/a/%E5%8D%9A%E5%A3%AB%E3%81%AE%E7%95%B0%E5%B8%B8%E3%81%AA%E6%84%9B%E6%83%85
About the film
The last black-and-white film from the master, Kubrick. Beyond this one he’s famous for The Shining, A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket, 2001: A Space Odyssey and more.
You sometimes see this one, 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange called his sci-fi trilogy.
What makes this one worth watching:
- Peter Sellers playing three parts at once — Dr. Strangelove, Group Captain Mandrake and President Muffley
- It came out with the Cold War in full swing, so — on the H-bomb and other weapons of destruction — what people at the time made of them
- The visual technique
- The savage way it depicts humanity all the way to extinction
Those are the ones that come to mind lol
Impressions & review
“Once it’s under way it will never be stopped, whatever anyone on your own side says to you — but tell them a three-letter code, known to one predetermined person and nobody else, and it’s over.”
An operation running on that policy might really cause problems like these if it ever actually got started, and that was hugely interesting.
And then the sheer stupidity of the Soviets keeping the “Doomsday Machine” a secret — a retaliatory weapon that triggers fully automatically the moment they’re attacked. That felt savage to me, and it was funny lol You go to the trouble of building a deterrent weapon and yet it’s pointless — that’s the feeling lol
The straddling scene at the end, and the ending arriving with Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” — I think that’s stylish work that still hasn’t faded at all.
Ahh~ so cool!
It’s a satire soaked in Kubrick, so I highly recommend it!
