Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was made in 1964 and is a satire/drama/comedy film about the Cold War. It stars Peter Sellers, who plays three roles; the President of the United States, Dr Strangelove and the British officer Mandrake. He acts remarkably well in all these- appropriately gloomy as Merklin Muffley, hilariously deranged as Dr Strangelove and with a comically but subtly exaggerated British accent as Mandrake, perfectly portraying the personalities of all these . It is regarded to be one of the best comedies of all time, and sometimes to be the best film of all time, which is understandable when you watch it.
The plot follows Jack Ripper, a deranged American general who instigates nuclear war on Russia simply because he does not like the Communists- he believes that they are putting poison in America’s water. The President tries to get Ripper to reveal the three-letter code that will recall his troops from completely destroying Russia. However, Ripper does everything he can to stop them from getting it. It is revealed that Dr Strangelove (a former Nazi), who exactly conveys the seated-maniacal-scientist-with-a-Germanic-accent-and-a-gloved-robotic-hand trope, commissioned a device of unfathomable power that, if the planes reach their target, could destroy all human and animal life on earth. The plot revolves around various people’s attempts to stop this and the increasing likelihood of humanity's doom.
What I most love about this film is the satire. The whole story is based around the concept that any random deranged, patriotic general could physically instigate nuclear war and destroy the whole world. This is portrayed as being entirely plausible, but at the same time totally ridiculous, which makes for some great dramatic irony. A piece of symbolism I loved is some American troops peppering each other violently with machine guns in front of a large sign that says “Peace is our profession”, along with the iconic ,"Gentlemen, you cannot fight in here, this is the war room!".
Another thing that stood out to me is the sexism as part of the comedy. Either it is genuinely sexist because it was made in 1964, in which case it is not part of the comedy, or it is designed to be so because that is part of the satire, which is what I think. The War Room, containing the people who are making all the important decisions, is totally made up of the exclusive club of white men of a certain age, which pokes fun at the fact that that was (and still is) the reality of who is making the important decisions about how our lives are run. In addition to this, there is only one woman in the whole film- the secretary of one of the generals, who, like Dr Strangelove, conveys the “secretary” trope perfectly- you could argue that these perfect stereotypes are also part of the satire.
The final element of the plot that spoke to me was the idea of something theoretically being “fail-safe”- the plan the USA had concerning how they were going to go about the war was seemingly foolproof because it supposedly could only be instigated by the President. However, this plan was fail safe from the point of view of a sane person. When plans are considered only in this way, they are more likely to fail because if insane people like General Ripper do knock the plan off its course the destruction they will cause will be more chaotic.
A beautifully written masterpiece, this charm of a film is both tense, entertaining, informative and absolutely hilarious in its own, unique doomsday-predicting way. I would easily rank this as one of the best films in the history of humanity because I cannot properly describe why it is funny- it just is. I would easily rate it five stars.
I would recommend this film to you if you like tense action presented with satirical lightheartedness, lived through the Cold War or enjoy any kind of film ever to exist. In terms of an age rating, there is some extremely mild sexual/sexist content which is hardly noticeable anyway, a few very intense scenes in which American troops try to get into Ripper’s base and do this in the most violent way possible, and footage of nuclear explosions.
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