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| World Targets in Megadeaths |
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| You'll answer to the Coca Cola company |
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| Peace is Our Profession |
Title: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Year: 1964
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Format: Blu-ray
Label: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Notes:
The anti-war black comedy that's hard to say anything original about as it seems like such a definitive, iconic and gloriously entertaining classic that everyone must know it inside out already, right?
Well perhaps. But this tale of a rogue general unleashing accidental nuclear Armageddon seemed like a prescient film to watch as we enter 2017, the year of Donald Trump's inauguration as President of the United States.
The film starts a little slowly with the plot setup of the nuclear bomber on patrol but as soon as move back to base and the start of the unauthorised operation and its catastrophic consequences we're treated to 80 plus minutes of awkward laughs and Peter Sellers' comic genius. There are too many great moments to list but on this viewing I particularly enjoyed the President's conversation with his Soviet counterpart, Sellers' awkwardly British response to a discussion on bodily fluids and Dr. Strangelove's desperate attempts to hide his auto-heil reflexes. Superb.
Beyond the laughs it was interesting to note the pessimistic tone of the film in similarity to Kubrick's 1950s anti-war film PATHS OF GLORY. The earlier film deals with the disregard for the lives of thousands of conscripts in World War I - flash forward 50 years and we're dealing with the lives of the whole human population. It's good to see that another 52 years later it hasn't happened yet, but who knows now?
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