Do We still Keep Loving the Bomb?

The film “Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” is nearly half a century old. Just shy of a few years of making it over the hill. Yet the essence of the film remains timeless… a rare sample of filmmaking that clings to memory with perfection. And it still holds up well to this very day.

The center of the film is basically the possibility of mutual destruction of war on both sides of the globe. It isn’t far from exaggeration. The fear, and dispelling notion, of nuclear warfare comes to the minds who lived through the cold war. As I have during the very tail end of it.

I have woken up every morning in my childhood for many years during the Reagan administration thinking of seeing that mushroom cloud in the sky. With a smile superimposed over it with a balloon saying, "I win." Those fears never went away as I would wake up and look through the window only to find that everything is still okay. My neighborhood was still there. I really honestly thought that Reagan would have pushed the button.

Reagan disgusts me. And there was also the near missile attack with Cuba during the Kennedy administration. Far too mucho of close call. Considering the few miles of distance between the countries. What a set-up.

But you find how ridiculous it was with the United States and the Soviet Union were building more weapons as they tried to outdo one another. It is like a pair of children trying to get the most toys to win the contest. It is a futile gesture and a stupid one at that with both countries. It was an endless quest to see who was the King of the Hill. And it nearly cost us dearly.

Imagine how many people could have been fed around the world instead of the money being spent to make the weapons of mass destruction. It was a ploy that lasted for far too long.

The film “Dr. Strangelove” reflects this callous attitude.

But the film finds ways of laughing at the absurdity of global wipe-outs. It pegs at the dire stupidity of nuclear warfare being the fate of mankind. There are often times when that might have been the case. Those fears were intertwined with the everyday living of people during the cold war. Who would win out? How long would it take? We ended up building enough weapons to destroy the earth six times over. Do we really need power like that?

The first portion of “Dr. Strangelove” begins with an unbalanced, slightly nutsy General Jack D. Ripper orders a first attack strike on the Soviet Union. His way of thinking is peaked during a moment of sexual intercourse when he realizes the possibility of Soviet conspiracy in the transfer of bodily fluids. Yeah, the guy was a little crazy.

And the rest of the film has United States officials scrambling, stumbling over each other’s toes, to save the Soviet from being bombarded by the attack. The call between the president and the Soviet leader is a priceless one as the U.S. leader tries to calm his Russian friend’s nerves down. Only to get overly excited himself in the process.

Yet the film carefully pilots its way through the narrative—the idea of what would happen if there was indeed a world wide attack that could end up in total devastation. The reality of it is very grim. The film also brings the point of view of one of the airplane pilots in Slim Pickens who flies a B-52 with a straight one shot ticket to the Soviet Union. He is the bomber’s commander who tries to rectify the situation when the plane’s bay doors would not open on impact.

There is one of the most chilling scenes in the film. The bit with Slim Pickens riding piggyback on the missile when it was released with him on it. You can only hear the whisper of winds in the background. The silence of the scene with his halloring and galloping like a cowboy still sends shivers down my spine. It’s a remarkable scene.

The screenplay is written by Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern and Peter George. The film’s trick points are the inquiry of what would happen if a bomb hit us. And it is a film worth looking into even though we are no longer in the cold war. The film offers us of what could have happened. That there were other possibilities of a horrible future in store for us.

The film is extremely funny one without going overboard. There’s a perfect mixture of political satire and slapstick. Particularly one of my favorite lines is when Peter Sellers, as the president, shouts at the top of his lungs, “Stop… stop fighting in here! This is the war room.” Classic stuff.

Certainly one of the strangest endings for the film… with the famous World War II song “We’ll Meet Again” playing in the background while a horde of explosions repeat itself in a clandestine of destruction. The film’s less than joyous foray into this bleak ending reminds the audience that things are not always hokey dory. That the verge of chaos is always just one button away. All it takes is one screwball to mess things up.

Let’s not forget that it is Sellers’ performances that entangles the sheer poetry of the film with his various numbers of roles as the president, Dr. Strangelove (you can see him in faraway shots in the earlier discussions in the war room) and the British officer. His contributions to the film can’t be ignored.

Neither is this film. It’s there. And it gives us the cold remembrance of the days gone. But threat will always remains as long as there are weapons allowed. It isn’t exactly a hopeful realization. Just a fact of life that most of us will have to live with anyway. With a laugh.