Film that cannot easily be dismissed - that being said . .

Rating: Null/10 (15 December 2005)

Kubrick is a tough one to appreciate. On the one hand you can't help but like his reliance upon the florescent light, lighting in general, and his slow set-work, set-piece films. And this is a film filled with fine leading and character actors, as well, quite obviously. And the latter alone often makes a film. So I want to dislike Kubrick. But I keep coming back to the DVDs, appreciating one or two things I had not previously. Kubrick, the late Kubrick, cannot be dismissed.
On the other hand, having said that, Kubrickism is also infantilism, adolescent fixations upon sex. It's crude jokes. Kubrick is the father, and it's not too much of a stretch to say, of Beavis and Butthead, and South Park (the Comedy Central mushmouth voice animation with cutouts). It's said that 'theater people' never really mature. They don't grow up.
Well, seen in that way, Strangelove is more a play-acted cartoon, like some FOX comedy of the 1990s. It's more farce than drama. 'Black comedy'? It doesn't come up to that. I don't think Kubrick intended such. And that was his mistake. It's because the farce is so cartoonish it overwhelms the drama. Drama there is. The set-piece interior of the B52 is striking, particularly for the era and the real cold war and desire to keep such military secrets. Pickens and the rest play it straight, mostly. So the Dallas/Vegas joke almost brings a laugh, in that context, but only because the tone is serious. Toe to toe with the Ruskies, like other absurd phrases, passed into the popular banter for decades afterward. There is suspense, action, and fear. These scenes make the film, and perhaps in spite of the farce and forced comedy ending.
Because back at the base rooms, even what subtlety is absent. It's nothing but madness at the AF base with the 'funny' name, and the spinning tape drives. Peter Sellers has a string in his leg. A what? You mean to threaten a brother officer, he asks, obviously upset but too weak to attack and shake the 'code prefix' out of the insane Ripper. The South Park folk would have a name for Mandrake. So it turns out that Ripper concocted some leftwing conspiracy theory about fluoridation based on his own failed fornications, his impotence. And so the solution, ultimately, is to abandon monogamy in the mine shafts, with Sellers' Strangelove compulsively saluting Adolph Hitler, and all of it's Kubrickian.
Stated another way, the clichés come fast and furious, just as in a recent film of that name. It's thoughtless. It's non sequitur. It's all too easy, and not generally funny. The work is put into the sets, not into the script. He's trying to make a point at odds with the very history of the time. The 'crisis' wasn't about reckless US action, but reckless Soviet action. And they literally had to loop or dub in Pickens as he originally jokes - Dallas - not Vegas. The President, in real life, had been assassinated. But even worse, the moral of the story is don't trust the Americans. They have no real control over their commanders or weapons. Not the 'Ruskies', as Pickens has it. Just as in the insane mocu-drama, Crimson Tide, America is reckless in its plans, in its commanders, and Russia, crazy as it may be (building a domesday device in this film), can always be trusted to keep the lid on. The good ole Ruskies. That's as much the vapid cliché as any. But Kubrick doesn't get it.
Again, the sets were great. But the Kubrick insisted that Scott, later to only slightly ham it up as Patton, should be shown falling over himself, and otherwise behaving as a spoiled child, or slapstick comic - everything, one might say, but that pie fight. And Scott may not have appreciated it then, or later. And I don't, now, in the 21st century, looking at this film, yet again.
For all that, one has to say that it is still a landmark film. It certainly doesn't merit a high rating on IMDb (and which is unusual given the age of the film). But it is good. It's good, again, not just for those sets, not just for the lead and supporting cast, but for the serious moments. It's good not for the concluding Nazi-farce scenes, which can lose the audience, but for the fight on the base. It's not good for the Hayden/Sellers play in the room, which is 'black comedy' much more with the low light on Hayden, than the close-ups of Sellers' Mandrake. It's good for the interplay of the crew on the B52.
Kubrick, in short, was wrong. This didn't play better as a farce. It could have worked better as a comedy. It didn't need Nazi-farce in a wheelchair. It didn't need the infantilism and 'bodily fluid' conspiracies. It didn't need Scott/Turgidson as buffoon. It's played at worst as a live-action cartoon. And so it continues to appeal to the adolescent, and few more than that, and always will. Where it's played for suspense and drama, I think it still appeals to all. But to those more experienced, and more intelligent, the film surely seems flawed, important for its historical importance and historical place, but not so much as a film for the ages. It surely made its points, however taken by whatever activists then and later. But it just doesn't play honestly. It doesn't make sense. And as for laughs, most any similarly adolescent 'britcom' is going to be funnier.