Day sixty-seven: Dr. Strangelove or... (May, 15)

"How can we win, when fools can be kings?", says a song by MUSE. Stanley Kubrick built, with Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb, a comedy around this question, more than 50 years before Matt Bellamy's song.

Despite being staged in the context of the Cuban missile crises in 62, and even if the Communism is not The question anymore (unless you live in Brazil, where the 50's paranoia is oddly enough worse than ever) and the cold war has been already replaced for other horrid conflicts, the Kubrick's main topic in this movie still prevails. The world is on the hands of unqualified, greedy, fool, crazy, disturbed rulers. Stupidity, provincialism, madness are presented in some of its characters. The ongoing presence of Nazism, under other names, is also discussed on the Peter Sellers's Dr. Strangelove. I caught some of the references in the movie, but there are so many that probably some of it escaped me. The ones that I've identified, though, were incredibly current in the nowadays politics. 

The situation was so unbelievably odd that a parody was a good choice to approach it. Peter Sellers is genius, George C. Scott is also terrific, and the whole movie unfolds in a dark comedy about the inapt rulers in a world increasingly deregulated.The final discussion about who would have more land and women when in the underground, bellow a destroyed planet was really scary, even if truly funny.  

Against this madness, we cannot do much but the best we can. However, as another musical quotation, "If you try the best you can, the best you can is good enough". Or we can hope so. 

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb.
Directed and writen by Stanley Kubrick. With: Peter Sellers, George C.
Scott, Sterling Hayden. US/UK, 1964, 95 min., Mono, Black and White (DVD).

PS: What a cineast as Stanley Kubrick is capable of... Four years after this staggering comedy, he presented the world 2001: A Space Odissey and, a couple of years later, A Clockwork Orange (both are book's adaptations). One man, three very accurate views of the world in different genres of movies.