Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Film review

I had never seen this film before, but I was vaguely aware of it and had watched the iconic scene with the guy in the cowboy hat riding the bomb as it plummets towards the ground. The film is a satire about the Cold War and threat of total nuclear annihilation. It took me a little while to get into it, but once I did I really enjoyed it.

The standout performance was undoubtedly Peter Sellers. I thought that he played two characters - but when looking on IMDB I found out that he actually played three characters. I was quite quick to recognise Peter Sellers as Captain Mandrake and Dr Stangelove but I had no idea he played the US president as well.

The absolute best line in the film for me was: “Okay. I'm gonna get your money for ya. But if you don't get the President of the United States on that phone, you know what's gonna happen to you?

…

You’re going to have to answer to the Coca-Cola company.” I was a quite disappointed that we don’t get to see Captain Mandrake again after this as he was my favourite character and I was hoping to see him have a conversation with the president.

I think what was striking about this film is that you can make a lot of comparisons with the governments such as the UK/US. Whilst the Cold War might be technically over, there are those who remain paranoid, blinded by patriotism and staunch believers in British/American exceptionalism.

Given the current state of the administrations of certain “superpower” nations and how they have demonstrated their complete incompetence and have highlighted many ineffective and bureaucratic systems that make up these governments – through their inability to control the coronavirus pandemic as successfully as other developed nations – I find it entirely believable that such a scenario could occur where we are inadvertently brought to the brink of World War 3 and/or the complete extinction of the human race.

Even in the 1960s there were those that believed in conspiracy theories such the one where General Ripper thinks that communists are trying to contaminate the water supply because Russians seemingly only drink vodka. Despite the fact that people are better educated these days and that we are now literally only ever a few clicks away from accurate information on any subject, social media has helped ensure that conspiracy theories are more popular than ever. I guess people just don’t have the time to spare to do any research. Why bother spending a few minutes investigating the facts behind 5G, as written by scientists, when you could just take a Facebook post at face value that was shared by Graeme from work (who regularly eats other people’s food in the staff room fridge and always pulls his trousers and underwear down to his ankles while using a urinal).

4 mushroom clouds out of 5