So, before you get to the review, I just want to say thank you to all the people who patiently waited for this review. I have been going through some serious unmotivation and writer's block lately, which is the reason for the long wait. But hey, it's out now! So yeah, thank y'all for managing to wait patiently for so long. Hope you enjoy the review.
Entry Number: 13
Film: Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb
Year Of Release: 1964
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Rating: ?
*Warning: Major spoilers*
If you haven't, go watch this film first, and then come back to this review.
As of writing this, we over here in Europe have a little crisis on our hands. Unless you have been living under a rock, you're probably aware that the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, has started a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Putin has of course been the subject of well-deserved international condemnation, as well as threats from other world leaders that if he continues this invasion, the consequences will be severe.
Right now, the possibility of something like a large-scale global conflict doesn't look all that plausible, but still, there is tension and there is a possibility. And this tension and this possibility reminded me of a film, that film being Dr. Strangelove by the one and only Stanley Kubrick, which is a film that was similarly made under extreme tensions and dangerous possibilities.
To those few who don't know, Dr. Strangelove is an infamous black comedy satire of the nuclear tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The unique thing about Dr. Strangelove is that it's by all means an incredibly daring satire (it even opens with a disclaimer) that was released in 1964, shortly after the Cuban missile crisis, which was the height of the Cold War nuclear tensions. And here's the thing about why Dr. Strangelove is such an infamous film: It literally ends with the end of the world due to nuclear annihilation. The fact that Dr. Strangelove was made at all is quite baffling. But the most baffling thing of all is that its satire has somehow aged like the finest wine in the world.
Dr. Strangelove is by all means a comedy of errors. A million errors, both big and small, all come together in an almost fatalistic way to bring on the end of the world as we know it. The big triggering reason for nuclear annihilation here is the aptly named General Jack D. Ripper, a very paranoid and manic man who has somehow gotten the power to annihilate the entirety of the Soviet Union with the push of a button. And that's also what he does, so he can protect the "natural essence" of America from the Soviets.
And here, what may be the most important aspect of Dr. Strangelove's brilliant satire comes into play: This movie is a hidden sex comedy. This may sound like a ridiculous claim, but once you notice it, you see it everywhere. Kubrick turns nuclear tension into sexual tension and turns the races between the United States and the Soviet Union (the arms race, the space race, etc.) into dick-measuring contests. Don't believe me? Just look at the famous scene of Major Kong riding the bomb that will eventually end the world. You may not have seen it, but the angle of the shot makes the bomb look like his penis. The further he descends towards the ground, the more the length of the bomb is revealed, almost making it seem like his "penis" is getting larger and larger, until he (and the whole world with him) explode in an orgasmic release of nuclear power. Again, the races between the United States and the Soviet Union as fatal dick-measuring contests.
So, now that I have gotten that out of the picture, let's talk some more about General Ripper. Ripper, being the maniac that he is, is often seen going on absurd mumbling rants. If there are two things that are constantly repeated in these rants, it's the aforementioned talk about "natural essence" and the particularly bizarre ranting about bodily fluids. You may brush these rants about "natural essence" and our "precious bodily fluids" as the meaningless rants of a complete maniac, but there is a hidden sexual metaphor here.
Ripper's rants are most often about how the communists want the "bodily fluids" of the Americans. In short, Ripper believes that the Soviets have been fluoridating American water supplies to pollute said "bodily fluids". When was it he came up with this insane idea? After the act of making love. After his "natural essence" was lost inside a woman, he was sent into a state of impotence. Since he just doesn't realize that he maybe is getting old, he blames his impotence on the Soviets and their fluoridation of American water supplies. This of course means that in the absurd world of Dr. Strangelove, the end of all life on earth was the result of one man's sexual frustration. Of all the jokes in this wonderful film, this might be my favorite. The whole concept of a man ending the entire world just because he can't perform sexually is frankly hilarious.
Ripper's rants also fit into the big picture of Kubrick turning nuclear tension into sexual tension. Ripper compares the world to a man because both are made up of 70% water. Since the communists over in the Soviet Union want the American people's fluids, the Soviet Union has to be a woman, which also means the United States is a man. Since the communists are poisoning the American water supplies and thus poisoning "the world", the United States, or "man" in this case, has to penetrate "Mother Russia" with their bomb planes (a very clear metaphor for a penis) and drop their bomb loads (a very clear metaphor for sperm), and thus "save the world".
Ripper is of course not the only obviously sexually frustrated general in the film, as we also have General Buck Turgidson, who is played brilliantly by George C. Scott. Scott's performance may as well be one of the most influential and ahead of its time comedic performances ever. It's almost an early version of Jim Carrey's most famous performances and Steve Martin's wonderful performance in All Of Me. Everything about Scott's performance is extra and over-the-top. He waves his arms around wildly and uncontrollably, and his facial expressions almost seem like something right out of one of those "elastic face" websites that you find on the internet these days. I truly do believe that if it wasn't for George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove, we wouldn't have Jim Carrey in Ace Venture: Pet Detective.
However, the thing that in many ways puts Scott's performance above most of Jim Carrey's is that there also is a purpose to Scott's performance other than it being uproariously funny. Let's take a look at the way Buck Turgidson is introduced: In his bedroom is a dame wearing nothing but a bikini, which is quite strange for a general to say the least. The phone rings, the lady answers it, and she shouts at Buck (who is implied to be over at the toilet) that the call is for him. He shouts back at her to tell them he's busy, the lady tells him that it's necessary, and after a few back-and-forths of this, Buck eventually leaves for the war room. Now, you may think that Buck being over at the toilet is just him taking a dump, but I myself think that he was preparing to have sexual intercourse, as is implied by what he says to the bikini-clad lady before leaving. "You just start your countdown and old Bucky will be back before you can say: Blast-off!" So yes, the reason for Scott's over-the-top performance is that his character has what many of us today call "blue balls".
Of course, this isn't just Kubrick saying that some of these generals care more about sex than the safety of their own country, but the fact is that Buck's "blue balls" play into the whole picture of nuclear tension as sexual tension. Unlike the other generals, Bucky seems to actually want the Soviet Union to be bombarded with nuclear bombs. It almost seems like the thought of nuclear annihilation excites him. And this of course plays alongside the whole "blue balls" thing. If the Soviet Union is a woman, and he is a man, he just can't wait for the nuclear loads to be dropped into "Mother Russia" and the whole world to end in a big, orgasmic "boom!" As he says: "You just start your countdown and old Bucky will be back before you can say: Blast-off!"
I could of course talk more about this film's use of cigars, to the way the president of the USA and the president of the Soviet Union talk like a married couple, to the "peace is our profession" sign, to the "our source was the New York Times" scene, to the brilliantly ironic use of "We'll Meet Again", to the way Kubrick pokes fun at absurd military procedures, to the brilliance of the iconic line "Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!", etc. But I feel this is the perfect place to conclude this review.
At the end of the day, Dr. Strangelove is a fatalistic and highly comical look at how humanity as a whole has a hilariously hard time staying away from its own doom, which is exactly why it has aged so well. Kubrick turns this into an absurd sexual lust for annihilation. This is at the end of the day the "Strangelove" of the film. Humanity's love for not only the bomb, but for our eventual self-destruction too. Like Dr. Strangelove himself not being able to control his mechanical arm, we, humanity, can not control ourselves from eventually being destroyed.
And it's here I would like to bring up the most important aspect of Dr. Strangelove, and really just the reason I decided to write about this bitter film during such dire times. Here's the big question:
Why the hell did Kubrick decide that Dr. Strangelove should be a comedy?
I have heard stories about how Dr. Strangelove was originally going to be a horror film, because nuclear annihilation is of course truly terrifying. But the longer Kubrick tried writing this film, the more he realized the comedy of it all. And thus, Dr. Strangelove became a dark comedy.
To answer the big question here at the end, I would like to point you towards a song I love very dearly. It's called "Pure Comedy", it's from 2017 and it's by Father John Misty. I always draw a lot of similarities between "Pure Comedy" and Dr. Strangelove, as both are satirical works about humanity's self-destruction that slowly build until they reach nuclear climaxes. While the whole song is brilliantly written, the final lines of "Pure Comedy" are easily the most impactful:
"The only thing that seems to make them feel alive is the struggle to survive. But the only thing that they request is something to numb the pain with until there's nothing human left. Just random matter suspended in the dark. I hate to say it, but each other's all we got."
I really do feel that Father John Misty was on the same wavelength as Kubrick was when making Dr. Strangelove. Once the world ends, we will never meet again. We can try to delay this inevitable end, but until then, we only have each other. All we can do is ... Well, laugh. And that's why Dr. Strangelove and really black comedy altogether matters, even in dire times like these. Things may look bad right now, but we can not lose our humanity to it. So ... Let's laugh!
Rating: 10/10
Next Review: Suspiria (1977)
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