Stanley Kubrick’s satirical look at a possible nuclear winter in Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb doesn’t get the get the credit it is due. Debuting during the Johnson Administration in 1964, the Cold War was in full swing, prompting the building of bomb shelters, terms like “mutually assured destruction,” and nuclear arms being produced at an alarming rate. Dr Strangelove took on all sides, featuring bumbling bureaucrats, sly Russians, mad scientists, and trigger happy soldiers.
Set on an Army base as a rogue general commands his bombers to attack their respective targets deep in Russia, the movie alternates between scenes in the war room at the pentagon, a B-52 bomber, and back at the base. Kubrick creates lasting impressions with these settings, the war room being most memorable with a dimly lit cavernous room covered on one side by maps of the rogue bombers locations and focused by a huge round table filled with the President and his top advisors. Peter Sellers flexes his acting chops, playing the President, a British captain, and the maniacal Dr. Strangelove. Other notable actors include George C Scott, Slim Pickens, a young James Earl Jones, and Glenn Beck (there’s apparently more than one of them and no, it’s not the crying one). Filmed in black and white, Dr Strangelove paints a hilarious picture of a horrible situation. A must see for any film fan.
