"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the War Room!"

Rating: 9/10 (21 February 2005)

I hesitate to call Dr. Strangelove a comedy, lest doing so encourages you to watch it and expect a laugh a minute. Not that it isn't funny, but it is a dark comedy; as dark as they come, probably, about a total nuclear doomsday. You also have to watch it with some sort of historical consciousness, I suppose, to truly understand the satire in "the mine shaft gap" and the "Doomsday gap." This movie is probably the best example of political satire I've ever seen; as a work of "irony, sarcasm, or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice, or stupidity," its particular target is the Cold War, yet the ultra-patriotic Texan fighter pilot who, complete with accent and cowboy hat, ends up dropping the weapon of mass destruction on the Soviet Union and triggering a chain of events leading to complete nuclear holocaust reminds us that politics and attitudes have not changed much since 1964, when the film was made. Its performances are probably its strongest points, with Peter Sellers as 1) RAF Group Captain Mandrake, 2) President Muffley, and 3) the title role of Dr. Strangelove, Sterling Hayden as Gen. Jack D. Ripper, George C. Scott as Gen. Buck Turgidson, James Earl Jones in his first movie role as Lieutenant Lothar Zogg, and Slim Pickens as Major "King" Kong, the aforementioned Texan pilot. I've actually heard that Sellers was supposed to also play Major Kong,but due to the fact that he either broke his leg or had doubts about a Texan accent (stories vary), Slim Pickens, a character actor from westerns, was brought in; I've also heard that Stanley Kubrick, the director, did not tell him that the film was a comedy, and the earnestness of his patriotic pep-talk to his crew, promising metals and promotions after they drop the bomb, is certainly a convincing portrayal of the jingoistic yet not all together un-admirable loyalty practiced by true believers in the American Duty, and does not in itself ring with irony as much as the rest of the film does. Of course, the pompous music and the actual context of the episode do frame it ironically, the context being the sudden decision by General Jack D. Ripper (Jack the Ripper. Get it? One in many wonderful instances of nomenclature, my personal favorite being Colonel Bat Guano) to initiate a pre-emptive strike against the Soviet Union, thereby destroying the "Cold" part of the Cold War. Ripper, believing that the Soviets are poisoning ''the purity and essence of our natural fluids'' by adding fluoride to the water supply, which was apparently a common belief in the 1950s, issues a Code Red, seals of his air force base, and orders a nuclear attack. Major Kong's flight crew is one of many to respond to this order, and will prove the only one to actually complete it. But before that can occur, we are introduced to a whole range of characters. RAF Group Captain Mandrake serves as the voice of reason countering General Ripper's manic "purity and essence of our natural fluids," mantra; he knows that Ripper is a few bombs short of a nuclear arsenal, yet tries to wheedle the code for recalling the doom bearing planes out of him through gentle persuasion, until it is too late. Being the clever person he is, he manages to figure out the code anyway, yet runs into another obstacle when he tries to call the president of the United States: he's out of change and the White House will not take a collect call. Meanwhile, President Muffley, the President of the United States and rather milquetoasty, has convened assorted advisors in an effort to prevent the unthinkable; among them, General Buck Turgidson, who's over the top paranoia and pride in the American nuclear program do not deter him from assuring his girlfriend that "it's not just physical," over the phone in the middle of a national crisis, and the sinister Dr. Strangelove, an ex-Nazi scientist who is now head of the United States' weapons development program, and who's black-gloved right hand springs into Nazi salutes and tries to throttle him to death. Also invited to the War Room, much to the angst of Turgidson ("He'll see the big board!"), is Soviet Ambassador de Sadesky, played by Peter Bull, who informs Muffley of the Soviet Union's planned retaliation for just such an eventuality: a spontaneous Doomsday device which can not be shut off or deactivated. When Turgidson and Sadesky almost come to blows, they are sternly told by President Muffley, "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the War Room!" That sort of irony runs through out the film, both verbally and, something I've rarely seen, visually: at one point, a full fledged battle on an army base is conducted with a "PEACE IS OUR PROFESSION SIGN" looming in the background. Returning to Major "King" Kong and his brave crew, they are hit by a Soviet missile as authorized by President Muffley to prevent the Russian "Doomsday" device from detonating automatically, and lose communications capabilities; when an emergency recall of the B-52s is finally sent out, they are therefore unable to receive the message and set out to complete their mission. The film-ends in a montage of many mushroom clouds, with Vera Lynn singing "We'll Meet Again," and you just know that they will. That even if the survivors are trapped underground for 90 years, awaiting a thaw in the nuclear winter, when the time comes the same characters, the same attitudes, and the same reasoning for warfare will re-emerge. After all, 40 years later, they have.