Dr. Strangelove (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1964) - EveryFilmIWatch Review
Download the Dr. Strangelove script PDF for personal, private use here.
Doctor Strangelove or: How I Learnt To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb perfectly demonstrates Stanley Kubrick’s unmatched ability to work in a wide variety of genres. Watching this, then The Shining, then Lolita and then Eyes Wide Shut and being told that these were all films directed by the same man is shocking and enthralling. It’s so rare to find directors who are willing to extricate themselves from the particular psychological, thematic, or visual niche that they inhabit, let alone ones who are excellent, in some cases peerless, in the work that they produce.
Doctor Strangelove is a wonderfully constructed comedy, a farce in most regards, but a farce whose antics are haunted by the real threat and terror that existed during the Cold War. Admittedly some of the film's bite, its riskiness, has been muted by the end of the Cold War but it doesn’t take much to re-contextualize the film's brazen satire of personalities, politics and power for a modern watch through. It’s a film that handles its subject matter very roughly, fearlessly cooking up the most absurd but anxiety-inducing scenario and thrusting its viewers through what is essentially the mid-to-late-20th century's most terrifying ‘What If.’
It features a performance, or rather multiple performances, from Peter Sellers that have truly immortalized the man amongst the comic geniuses of the 20th century, the Chaplins, Wilders and Marxes of the world. He is astoundingly good in every roll, my favourite being the British RAF officer, forced to act as therapist and logical sidekick to the deranged American general, intent on thrusting the world into a nuclear disaster. Naturally he is also excellent as the titular character, putting in an intensely physical performance as the ex-Nazi doctor whose former affiliations have left him with a wholly inappropriate set of vocal and physical ticks. The film is somewhat misshapen, with some of its pacing indicating how good it could have been as a Python-esque sketch series. But beyond this, it’s one of the funniest political satires I’ve seen, contending with, but not quite bettering, The Death Of Stalin. As I write that, it occurs to me what a hilarious double bill these two would make together. It hardly needs saying but Kubrick was a freakish talent and watching this film makes the mind boggle, prompting the question: was there anything he couldn’t do?
EveryFilmIWatch is multi-channel film review project run by Sebastian Cox, ScriptUp co-founder. Further reviews can be found on Instagram.