All I knew about Dr. Strangelove going in is that it's a black comedy about nuclear warfare that features Peter Sellers. And considering the frightful tension of our President getting in twitter-beefs with North Korea, I figured it would play as relevant today as it did in '64. This couldn't be more true.
I *loved* this film. Like other genre-bending films, Dr. Strangelove begins with a rather straight-portrayal of an impending nuclear attack that gradually descends from irony, to character charms, to wit, and finally into slapstick comedy. Using comedy to depict the growing madness of MAD (mutually assured destruction) was a brilliant device and the humor still holds up today (my favorite joke: "You can't fight in here!--this is the War Room!"). This was my first Kubrick film (more to come!) and I am already enthralled.
Peter Sellers was brilliant, not in his exaggeration but in his restraint. Dr. Strangelove was a great dopey character, but my favorite character he played was Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, the stuffy and proper British officer (but moral center), whose polite attempts to subvert the apocalypse had me giggling. I also thought George Scott and Slim Pickins were great and it was neat to see James Earl Jones in the bombing galley of the B-52 (as opposed to hearing him in a TIE Fighter).
Like I mentioned, this film remains tremendously relevant some 54 years later. Naturally, it's a reminder that for all the safeguards in place to prevent nuclear war, both human and automated, the apocalypse is just a few steps away. There's also the damaging effects of nationalist, conspiracy laden rhetoric, littered in today's #fakenews cycle--General Ripper, the idiot who placed the path to war in motion, did so under a conspiracy theory of the effects that water fluoridation had on the purity of God-fearing, capitalist bodies. Finally, the film is full of sexually-charged men in positions of power, orchestrating the end of the world. In a world where our loon of a President brags about 'how big his nuke button is', the film's innuendos felt hardly satirical.
I can't recommend this one enough!