A Review Of The Strange Movie Dr Strangelove With Peter Sellers

Dr Strangelove – How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is one of the all time great war films exactly because it is so unlike anything else in the genre. It’s much closer to a Marx Brothers film than it is to The Dirty Dozen or Saving Private Ryan. This is exactly why it was so controversial, and why it stands as a shockingly sincere and honest statement on the nature of war.

The film is very funny because when you think about it, the very notion of war is absurd. Not to discredit the courage of those who have gone to defend their countries, the film focuses on the business of war, the administrative end, where politicians will send men to die for the sake of their own egos. In fact the notion of the bomb as phallic symbol is made literal with the iconic image of the film: Major Kong riding a nuclear bomb down to Earth while whirling a cowboy hat over his head.

The film is primarily a comedy, and it’s a real comedy. The jokes aren’t just meant to “make you think”, they’re really there to make you laugh, so while the movie definitely makes its point, it’s certainly not the sort of humor that’s “Not funny, but has something to say”. The humor is, in fact, incredibly funny.

When Kubrick dealt with similar subject matter in Full Metal Jacket, he managed to make a movie that was just as funny without it being so overt. There are no direct jokes in that film, but the movie stands as a comic masterpiece nevertheless. By the mid eighties it would seem that Stanley Kubrick had come to think that you don’t need jokes to make war seem absurd.

The heart of the cast is Peter Sellers, who plays several characters. In today’s Hollywood, one comic actor in multiple roles is usually a sign of a terrible comedy, where they thought that five unfunny characters could be made funny if they were all played by the same guy wearing a variety of fat suits and women’s dresses. Sellers, on the other hand, was just the most capable actor of playing all of these wild characters.

Of course the centerpiece of these performances is Strangelove himself, the wheelchair bound former Nazi physicist suffering from “alien hand syndrome”, wherein he will subconsciously throw out a Nazi salute only to have to pull his hand back down. The link between the power of nuclear arms and sexual dysfunction is made most clear with Strangelove, who seems to experience a real thrill when the bombs start falling.

George C. Scott’s performance as General Buck Turgidson is another highlight. It’s odd to see such a wild performance from Scott, who is typically noted as a gruff master of understatement. Certainly, his trademark is to do with a grizzly whisper what most would do with a shout. Kubrick actually had to trick Scott into going so wild for this role by requesting over the top “practice” takes, and then using them in the actual movie. Slim Pickens as Major Kong was similarly fooled into giving a straight performance by being told that the film was a standard war film and not a comedy.

If you haven’t yet, you need to see this film before you die. It is essentially the only statement that ever needs to be made on the foolishness of nuclear war.

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