Satire of the first order

Rating: 10/10 (24 February 2012)

Quite rarely a movie comes out of nowhere and astounds with its originality. This movie is one such. I think there has never been a more mordant political satire ever filmed, nor hardly ever a better movie, as far as that goes.
This movie came out when the cold war between the Soviet Union and the United states was in full swing. I don't recall it ever having been stated as an official policy, but the idea of mutual assured destruction (MAD) was in play--if one country tried to annihilate the other with a nuclear attack, there was enough time for the other to deploy an equally devastating retaliatory attack. This movie captures the absurdity of this situation wherein a single United States general goes nuts and orders a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. If you were not around to experience the fear and anxiety of the time, then this movie should convey a bit of the mood of the era that produced such a film. The concept of a Doomsday device that would be automatically triggered in the event of a nuclear bomb detonation was invented by Herman Kahn in his book, "On Thermonuclear War," a book that Kubrick had studied for the film.
We have gone beyond the dread of apocalypse accompanying any world conflict and the times when a variety of fallout shelters were sold on lots like car lots, but even now the message here is not totally irrelevant-- someone misinterprets a blip on a radar scene, a missile is launched, retaliation ensues, and we are in dire circumstances.
However you are affected by the story you should be able to appreciate the genius of the execution. The black and white photography is used to great effect. The war room, with the "big board" and the eerily lighted monster conference table, has to be one of the grandest sets ever designed and constructed. Kubrick had a talent for realism as well. The battle scenes where the army tries to take the General's headquarters seemed like documentary footage. And it is hard to believe that the inside of the B-52 was not done inside of a real B-52 (apparently revealing the interior of a B-52 was classified at the time, but those in the know said that Kubrick's presentation was pretty much dead on.) Watching the crew of the B-52 calmly watch their radar screens while a missile tracked them was chilling, and the scene inside the plane when the missile exploded a couple miles away was masterfully done.
Every actor turns in a stellar performance, with Peter Sellers a standout in playing three different parts. If you did not know about this triple play, you would have not guessed it. When Sellers first realizes that General Ripper has gone round the bend with his concern about his precious bodily fluids, the expression on Seller's face is priceless.
The screenplay is brilliant, presenting characters and situations that are exaggerated, but not totally beyond belief. As one example, consider the discussion about having select people live in mine shafts for a hundred years while waiting out the radioactive fallout. Given the distrust between the two nations you could imagine a General Turgidson worrying that the Soviets may take a bomb down with them into the mines so that when people emerge in a hundred years they would have the advantage.
The only minor flaw for me was the scene that has Colonel Bat Guano (if that really was his name) firing into a Coke machine and being sprayed by soda--such slapstick is not in keeping with the tone of the rest of the production.
The images on the Blu-ray DVD are crisp as might be expected. The DVD also contains a load of extras, the most interesting being pop-up picture-in-picture interviews and historical information relevant to what is on screen.