Purity of essence

Rating: 10/10 (12 September 2018)

I've watched this multiple times before. Once as a child, a few times in university, and this was the first time since. Every time I've enjoyed it more than the last.
One of the times I watched it was for a joint event I organized for the MTSU Cinema Club and MTSU ACM Siggraph. The plan was double features that thematically paired a classic film with an animated film. I paired this movie with The Iron Giant, the theme being Cold War science fiction and paranoia.
I had a disagreement at the time with the faculty advisor who felt I was essentially trying to turn Siggraph into Cinema Club, though no other officers of the club felt that way, nor did members. The event was actually quite a success. I'd have done more of them, but the advisor went behind the backs of the officers and canceled its advertising. As I'd said at the time, the point was to show that animated films could handle complex thematic material that we are comfortable admitting is in classic movies. I at one point nearly shouted at him that if it had been a purely cinema club event, I'd have paired Dr. Strangelove with Inglourious Basterds, the themes instead being black comedy and American xenophobia.
And for years I couldn't get that movie pairing out of my head. So last night, finally, my partner and I watched them together. Both movies try and explore, in hyperbole, the ways in which we Americans have caricaturized the people's with whom we've had political strife.
My major complaint about the film is one I shared with my partner, though she was the only one to verbalize, there are essentially no female characters. Well, there's one. Scott's character is sleeping with his secretary, and so she is in one scene. I'm uncertain where one could have been, given that the plot essentially all takes place in a few "boy's clubs".
The best actor in this movie is certainly Peter Sellars, though George C. Scott and Sterling Hayden were excellent as well. Sellars plays multiple roles with different accents, costumes, and hair. (The first time, when I was a child, I didn't even notice they were all the same.) But the main reason I keep coming back to this movie is the morbid humor.