Mocking Fear

Rating: 10/10 (28 June 2008)

At the height of the Cold War came one of the bravest and most timely and timeless of comedic films. Stanley Kubrick's satire of blow-hard politicians, insane military men, conspiracy theories and the strategy of MAD (mutual assured destruction) blasted a perceptive hole in the madness of the time. This film is unmistakably modern in its comedy and was a forebear to the ultra-ironic sense of humor that is the bread and butter of all the popular satire of this era. Of course, most young people (myself included) will have already seen many of the famous scenes in Dr. Strangelove replicated on The Simpsons long before they ever see the actual movie.
The film's plot involves ardent anti-communist General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden; ironically a one-time communist sympathizer) and his plan to destroy the USSR. Ripper's sexual inadequacies have led him to the conclusion that he is the victim of a communist conspiracy "to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids." His response is to order a sneak attack against the Russians, in the hope that President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) will subsequently be forced to finish the job.
From here we see the desperate attempts to stop the attack (and the subsequent activation of the Russian doomsday device) in some of the greatest sequences of comedy in film history. Ridiculous and hilarious dialog abounds. Most of the characters in charge are shockingly petty and out of touch with the deadly reality of the situation. In addition to Sellers' three roles the most memorable performance comes from George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson. He is jingoistic, incompetent and cannot refrain from insulting the Russian ambassador, even with the fate of the world on the line. "You can't fight in here; this is the War Room!" scolds the president.
Thematically, two things stand out for me. The Kubrick theme of dehumanization is constantly present and Kubrick makes it very clear that humans are the problem. The technology they create does, for the most part, exactly what it is supposed to do, whether this means bombs that were designed to destroy the world doing just that, or Dr. Strangelove's Nazi-made mechanical arm acting like... a Nazi. Kubrick, at least in this film, has no inherent problem with technology, only with the very frail and flawed human beings that control it.
Finally, to put it simply, human motivation in this film can be summed up as follows: it's all about sex. Phallic images are pervasive from start to finish and most characters have sexually suggestive names. The men's faces light up ebulliently when Strangelove suggest that human beings may be able to survive beneath the earth in mine shafts and states that a suitable breeding population should include a female to male ratio of 10:1. I cannot shake the idea that that may have been their plan all along.
Never before or since has such an audacious comedy been made. As far as the current geo-political situations go (Iraq et al), we have only seen a series of somber, often didactic dramas that have received mixed reviews and universally poor box office. Will someone have the courage to make another great intelligent political comedy, for our time? Given the much lower overall threat of total annihilation today, surely we deserve at least as much dark entertainment as audiences in the sixties received.