One of the greatest black comedies ever made

Rating: 10/10 (25 February 2010)

Stanley Kubrick was a man before his time, his movies resonate years after he made them, particularly regarding A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey but although 'Dr. Strangelove' is also a film which has aged well and could apply to the ongoing global conflicts of today it must have been a much more terrifying prospect so shortly after the Cold War when the US and Russia were flexing their atomic muscle and appeared to be on the brink of all out nuclear warfare. Dr. Strangelove is a parody of that situation and a political and military satire.
The movie started out as a novel, 'Red Alert' by Peter George which Kubrick intended to adapt into a serious feature film closely following the book which was a drama/thriller rather than a comedy, however whilst writing the screenplay Kubrick found much of a story about two nations threatening to wipe each other off the planet so ludicrous the scenes were almost unintentionally funny. So he decided to tweak it into a black comedy which intentionally went out of its way to highlight how ridiculous the situation was.
In the film's plot an army general named Ripper (played brilliantly deadpan by Sterling Hayden) has lost his marbles and gone rogue, making use of the ill-advised 'Plan R' which has been created for the possibility that Washington is bombed and the country's leaders are killed allowing a lower ranked military commander to order a nuclear counter-strike. However Ripper has 'exceeded his authority' and gone ahead regardless.
The film mostly takes place in just three sets: Ripper's office where he's passively holding a British RAF exchange officer Lionel Mandrake hostage, a B-52 plane which has been sent on orders from Ripper to drop the bomb in Russia and 'The War Room' in The Pentagon, where the President Merkin Muffley is in conference with the country's leaders, including General Buck Turgidson (George C Scott), who's ideas include just starting an all-out offensive on Russia that will destroy 90% of their nuclear capability and will only result in 10-20 million killed, tops. Muffley is informed by Soviet Premier Dmitri that if the planes drop an atomic bomb on Russia it will set off a 'doomsday device' which will destroy every man, woman and pigeon on the face of the earth. The rest of the movie follows the inept leaders trying to figure out ways to avoid the nuclear Armageddon that awaits.
Peter Sellars plays three roles, the British RAF officer Mandrake, President Muffley and the films most eccentric character (and he has plenty of competition) Dr. Strangelove, from whom the title gets its name. All three are completely different and each played to perfection by Sellars. Mandrake is upper-class and terribly polite, his obvious discomfort with the insane Ripper is hilarious as Ripper tries to explain his theory of how the 'Commies' are trying to impurify his 'precious bodily fluids' by sabotaging the drinking water. Some of the punchlines are thrown out so deadpan by Ripper that if you're not concentrating properly on what he's saying you might miss the joke, which might be a problem for those without much of an attention span.
Muffley is a mostly seriously character although his extended monologue with the drunk Russian Premier (not heard) is one of the funniest bits of the film as they try to each convince each other how sorry they are. Turgidson plays off him well as the big kid who is finally getting to play war for real, apparently Scott was upset Kubrick was pushing him to overact but it certainly works in the context of the film.
Finally Dr. Strangelove himself, who provides some of the most obvious laughs and although in only two scenes is probably the most memorable character in the film. He is a former Nazi scientist who specialises in armed warfare, confined to a wheelchair he seems to have a bizarre case of 'alien hand syndrome' which causes him to occasionally give a Nazi salute during a moment of excitement, only for him to wrestle it under control with his other hand. He also calls the president 'Mein Fuhrer' mistakenly.
This is a brilliant satire and although not obviously funny it makes you laugh in a slightly disturbing way, like this is how we're all gonna die one day so lets have a good laugh about it while we're still here. Sellars should have won an Oscar here for me, I'm not certain who won it that year but they couldn't have done a better job than he did, he was given a free-reign by Kubrick and much of his dialogue is ad-libbed and its noticeable in some of the funnier moments where he appears to just come up with something hilarious on the spot, if you are extra observant you will notice fellow cast members struggling to hold in their laughter. George C Scott also shows his incredible talent which was later fully exploited in 'Patton'. As a self-confessed Kubrick fan, this isn't quite my favourite of his but its up there and one of the best black comedies you'll ever see.
10/10