Flawless

Rating: 10/10 (8 September 2003)

I'd seen Dr. Strangelove a dozen times in the '60s and early '70s. Then, working in a theater in D.C. in '75, it was playing there for months. I got to know every scene like the back of my hand. It got to a point where I was looking for a flaw, any glitch or lack of any sort. None. I later read that Coppola had also called it precisely 'flawless.' Kubrick became renowned as a perfectionist to a nutty degree. In The Shining, for instance, Jack Nicholson threatened to walk off the set after more than 150 takes on one scene. The camera-work was crack-of-the-whip smart, yet unobtrusive. Black and White, the movie comes across as chromium. I think it is the very best Peter Sellers, playing three roles superbly, all funny. George Scott, also never better, imitating a bomber is priceless. Sterling Hayden as the crazed General with the 'precious bodily fluids' obsession is amazingly reality-based considering the fanatical rightwing's focus on fluoride as one of hundreds of elements of the 'International Communist Conspiracy.' Strangelove was certainly Slim Pickens high water mark as the atomic age bronc-buster.
It works both as a comedy and as an edge-of-chair thriller. The level of satire is profound: questionable if a major studio would risk such intelligently dangerous material in today's equally jingoistic atmosphere.
I can't imagine that any cinema cognoscenti anywhere would do a top ten list of directors without Kubrick well up on it. This is one of this un-prolific artist's very best, which, as the director of 2001, Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Barry Lyndon; is saying a whole lot.
What's the fuss about? Great film art about as good as it gets.