‘Dr. Strangelove’

“Dr. Strangelove” is a comedy about a very serious subject — nuclear holocaust. The majority of the movie takes place in the war room. To some, this film is known as Stanley Kubrick’s best or at minimum one of his most-influential films. Mainly because he truly brought satire to the fore-front of cinema.

Filmed in England and conceived (not based on) the book 1963 book “Red Alert,” this film was controversial. The country was only two years out of the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) by the time Strangelove hit screens. So nuclear missiles were not a funny topic. However with wonderful actors like Peter Sellers (“Lolita”) and George C. Scott (“Patton”), Kubrick took a genius script (co-written with Terry Southern, “Easy Rider”) and a 130-foot-long set built by hand and took the audience into this taboo subjects of war, politics and the greatest fear of the time: nukes.

What is truly amazing is that Sellers plays three roles and I don’t want to spoil which ones, watch the movie and try to spot it. Two of the characters were created on-set, improvised and made up as if Kubrick and Sellers were jazz musicians.

This film has an interesting side-story. Around the same time Director Sidney Lumet (“Dog Day Afternoon”) was developing a serious movie about nuclear war titled “Fail Safe,” set to star Hollywood legend Henry Fonda (“On Golden Pond”). With the fear that one movie would destroy the box office of the other or lawsuits would arise, Columbia Pictures decided to purchase “Fail Safe” and release both films. So a funny and serious movie about the same topic came out and it was disastrous for “Fail Safe.” Everyone to this day loves “Dr. Strangelove” more and many people my age have never even heard of “Fail Safe.”

What is most important about “Dr. Strangelove” is it is a film of its time. Stanley Kubrick had the opportunity (due to his successes with “Sparticus and “Lolita”) to tackle this topic and, more important, help us not be so worried; which is why the film’s subtitle is “How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.”

Kubrick was before his time and as I re-watched the film and write this, I realize he was showing us we need to live life and not live the fear of war, politics and what “might” happen. 46 years later with the war on terror and 9/11 forever set in our minds,  this film is an important one to see.