Dr. Strangelove. 1964 Film or 2011 Reality??!!!!???

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb debuted in 1964. It was directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on the book Red Alert written by an ex- RAF pilot Peter George (Bryant). Kubrick, George and Terry Southern wrote the screenplay.   It was nominated for four academy awards among many others. Peter Sellers takes on 3 roles and won the oscar for the film. Kubrick also won for best director and shared the writing oscar with Southern and George. As a Cold War satire, the plot of the film revolves around the panic that occurs after the insane General Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden) orders his men to wipe out the Soviet Union with a nuclear airstrike. Ripper’s reason for doing this is because he feels that the communists are polluting our bodily fluids by using water fluoridation as a biochemical weapon. Meanwhile, the Russians have prepared for the instance of a nuclear attack and developed a doomsday device that will wipe out the entire Earth if they are nuked. So, unless someone can figure out a way to stop the impending attack on the USSR, the world as we know it would cease to exist.  As Kubrick proved with Paths of Glory, he has a point to make and saving the world at the end of the film just would not have driven it home. He gives no retreat to his anti-war message once again and we see existence and humanity go up in a puff of smoke.  The film gives no dignity to war and leaves little behind for politicians and military men. It sends a message on the absurdity and fallacies of war and violence. It’s too bad that more people didn’t get that message. The primary message that is conveyed in Dr. Strangelove is that we have a conglomerate of people who do not consider the best interest of the people when doing their job.  It isn’t that they are all evil and hope for our ultimate demise, but that they are human and are incapable of being anything other than mere mortals who have limited mental capacity. Kubrick shows us a very scary fact through General Ripper’s nervous breakdown. Men in power are only human and anyone can meltdown at any moment. Especially the guy that has his finger on the big red button that could wipe us all out. Kim Jong il is a very eccentric and insane dictator from North Korea that has access to nuclear weapons and could easily lose it and blow us to smithereens.  So not only do we take a message of warning about who we elect and give power to, but there is also a Camusian existentialist message from the film by pointing out the absurdity of creating nuclear weapons only to turn around and try and stop them. The film ends with more Camus-like paradox. How will we survive and recover from nuclear holocaust? The paradox that ties in the existentialist theme is that finding meaning in life is not discussed until survival is eminent. There was not a survival plan prior to this discussion, although the weapons were made in order to facilitate such an occurrence. Once again, Kubrick’s anti-war message was loud and clear with a hint to not take anything for granted because some crazy little man could push a button any minute. 

Dr. Strangelove, like any satire was made in order ridicule and shame society into improvement.  Strangelove was made just a few years after the Bay of Pigs incident when there was a heightened intensity in the United States and in places around the world over nuclear weapons and the technology used to set them off. Paranoia was rampant which was a breeding ground for absurdity and maniacal behavior.  Any moment of hysteria in one of the button-pushers could have set off nuclear war.  The “missile gap”  between the United States and the USSR was a common source of propaganda in order to continue manufacturing more nuclear weapons and was parodied in the film with the “mine-shaft gap” when formulating the survival plan.  The fallacy in the philosophy of nuclear deterrence is also shown by the film.  Kubrick brings to life it’s absurdity by showing how meaningless it is to create a market for shared annihilation of both the attacker and the defender with no victory,  but only effective reciprocal destruction. With the paradox of shooting down nukes when a doomsday machine going off is imminent, Strangelove points that nuclear war is inherently suicidal. Buck Turdlington (George C. Scott), who is advising the President says, “we need to get us one of them Doomsday machines”. His fallacy is that he is unaware that he already has one. Nuclear was is unwinnable and is not a rational strategy to fight communism, which is an ideology. 

There is much creativity involved in Dr. Strangelove. The sounds, sights, and character names are all contrived in order to emphasize the absurdity of the situation.  The juxtaposition of the music that is played throughout the film is a technique used by Kubrick before. In the beginning of the film we hear the whimsical music while we see the off-shape, scratchy and harsh handwriting. It is easy to display the sadness of an event by confusing our ears with something that sounds beautiful and nostalgic while watching something disgusting and disturbing. He used this technique at the end of Paths of Glory as well as Dr. Strangelove. The harmonies of the voices of the characters was also an important aspect. The dialect of the cowboy Air Force pilot was so important to Kubrick that he hired an actor to replace Peter Sellers from playing that part among the other 3 because he didn’t quite sound like he was from Texas. The irony of the Texas pilot dropping the bomb on an undeserving terrain is not at all lost nowadays, but perhaps is a happy accident by Kubrick since W was just a small boy at the time.  Sellers does an excellent job as the snarky and clueless American President (Johnson was in office at the time) who breaks the news of nuclear holocaust to the USSR Premier like a neighbor calling to let you know that his son accidentally hit a baseball through your car window. Perhaps the most apparent form of ridicule are the names of the characters. Obviously General Ripper is alluding to Jack the Ripper, the infamous serial killer.  President Merkin Muffey is a reference to slang words for a woman’s vagina and is the antithesis for Buck Turdlington. Buck is a term for a male stud and Turdlington could simply be a turd reference or could also be emphasizing the word “turgid” meaning swollen and distended.  Buck’s facial expressions and histrionics are no doubt a creative aspect of the film. His overacting is on point and aids the message. “Bat Guano” simply means bat excrement and the USSR Prime Minister “Kiss-off” is  a term for the start of disaster. The Russian ambassador is named after the Marquis de Sade - an infamous and perverted sexual lover and sadist in the 18th century.  The appearance of Dr. Strangelove toward the end of the film was the cement that held Kubrick’s vision of absurdity together. The put the peoples ultimate fate in Strangelove.  He was obviously a former Nazi who was desperately trying to hold down his “Heil Hitler” arm. Right before the fallout, he stands up out of his wheelchair and says that he can walk. He is the personification of the absurd. 

Dr. Strangelove has gone from satire to reality. While Kubrick’s intention was to ridicule the Cold War, it is shameful that it is becoming a reality. Last month the Tea Party managed to outlaw the fluoridation of water in one of Florida’s largest counties. The law was not passed with health or safety of the residents in mind, but rather silly propaganda distributed by the Tea Party-goers. There was a three hour debate before the bill was voted on where Dentists showed decades of empirical data that fluoride was a safe and effective way to safeguard people against tooth decay. The argument for fluoride was followed by an activist Tony Caso who said, “Fluoride is a toxic substance and it is all part of an agenda that's being pushed forth by the so-called globalists in our government and the world government to keep the people stupid so they don't realize what's going on”. He went on to claim that “this is the U.S. of A., not the Soviet Socialist Republic," (MSNBC Article) If this man is using the same philosophy as General Ripper in Dr. Strangelove to control votes, then imagine what the same man could do if he controlled the nuclear weapons. With economic meltdown occurring, crazy dictators with nukes, as well as religious fundamentalist extremists getting into the heads of scared and manic people, the events in Dr. Strangelove may not be too far off base and out the realm of possibility. The film was not only relevant then, but remains even more so relevant today, and that is quite frightening.  

Paths of Glory

Spoiler Alerts* (you probably won't watch this film anyway)  Paths of Glory is an anti-war film made in 1957 and set during the first World War. It was written and directed by Stanley Kubrick who based the film off of the novel of the same name by Humphrey Cobb. Kirk Douglas plays Colonel Dax, a French commanding officer who sees the fallacy of hypocrisy in War. This film gives us a dramatization of French army politics in 1916 during World War I,  which were a brutal battleground all of their own through Kubrick’s grim but honest lens.  With progressive undertones, Kubrick peruses the issues of post-traumatic stress disorder, friendly fire, and due process. This film shows us the profane side of war, one that was not as popular in that day in age and today remains clandestine. Dax’s point of view is shown through the eyes of logic. However, General Paul Mireau,  played by George Macready, clearly had his own agenda, refused all logic, and was pursuing his political promotions through the killing of innocent and brave soldiers. Using the brave people of the military for propagation of political power is not an old story, but one that could be retold very easily on the current wars that our men and women are fighting as well as the war on drugs. 

 

Mireau gives the orders for the men of the 701st Regiment to take the anthill, a German occupied position that is well defended, and impregnable according to Dax. He informs Dax that most of his men will die and that 5% will likely die of friendly fire. Dax reluctantly agrees, not wanting to be separated from his own men. Mireau knows that this is an impossible feat, but wants to give it  try in order to get his promotion of another star. The next day when the men of the 701st are sent out, the B company refuses to go out into the carnage of men dropping like flies, knowing that it is a suicide mission. Mireau orders them (his own men) to be fired upon but the Battery Commander, Captain Rousseau (John Stein) refuses to comply with Mireau's order and keeps his men held back. Dax returns to the trench to find them there and his attempts to rally them falls on deaf ears as a body knocks him off the ladder. The consequence is that the men of the regiment who retreated or stayied in the trenches are court marshaled for cowardice by General Mireau and General George Broulard (who is played by Adolphe Menjou). 

The logic that Dax follows in response to the court marshal is important to the film because it reveals the fallacy of the war itself as well as the politics that fuels it in the first place.  In the beginning of the film we learn that Dax is one of France’s top criminal defense attorneys.  When Dax points out that they should just execute himself instead of the men of company B, we can assume that he in fact is implying that if anyone should face a firing squad, it should be the scumbag General Mireau since he is the leader of the entire regiment. 

Hypocrisy is pointed out in the context of friendly fire as well. One of the ugliest aspects of war, this subject is still taboo today and has been under a lot of scrutiny with the case of Pat Tillman. Lt. Roget, played by Wayne Morris is in charge of a night patrol. He takes along two men. One of these men is  killed when a drunken Roget impetuously throws a grenade out into the dark. He fails to report his mistake and lies about the death of the soldier. Dax seems suspicious of Roget, but doesn’t peruse it, probably because he was more worried about invading the anthill. This shows us that friendly fire deaths went greatly under reported and probably still do today. 

The film also sheds early light on the issue of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  We see a man who is clearly not in his right mind referred to as a baby and subsequently punched by General Mireau as he does a very political meet and greet with the men of the 701st in the trench. Mireau claims that there is no such thing as ‘shell shock”. This is a metaphor for the military failing to address the mental health issues of the men returning from battle. With little advancement or recognition, as well as treatment in subsequent wars, this is yet another form of casualty that Kubrick points out. 

Kubrick’ s signiature intense style is shown in the scene where Dax is walking through and past the men of the 701st Regiment as they are standing against the sides for cover against the barrage.  This scene foreshadows his 1975 film The Shining which has quite memorable hallway scenes. We see the camera angle change from Dax’s point of view, looking directly into the eyes of the men, to the men’s point of view looking directly into Dax’s eyes.  The shells are heard roaring overhead and many fall very closely, some falling onto Dax and his men. Blowing a whistle between his teeth and with a pistol in his hand, Dax climbs a ladder as a soldier is heard counting down.  During the battle, no music is played . Only the orchestra of booms, bangs, shells clanking and whistles blowing. In scenes where intensity needs to be heightened, Kubrick uses a drum that gives a sense of urgency to a mere meeting of men. He also uses large open and fancy spaces as an environment where diabolical plots are formed.  Douglas’s voice during the trial sounds echo and hallow, like he is speaking into a vacuum. Which we find that he actually is because no one is listening to him. Another aspect of the cinematography is the casting itself.  Kubrick uses the appearances of the actors to generate assumptions on their character. The portly General Broulard is obviously not a soldier and didn’t get to his station in life from the bravery of coming out of the trenches. With the scar on the face of Mireau, we can assume hat he must of been in battle at one time, but has since been corrupted by the hunger for political power. Kubrick’s scenes are tight and acute with the use of the first person point of view. With a voyeuristic and Hitchcock-esque element, he draws the audience into the scene by showing us the same information as the character involved. Thus becoming a shared experience, tying the audience and character closer together. 

The men accused of being cowards are given a sham of a trial with Dax being the defense attorney, the audience feels the 3 accused may stand a fair chance of exoneration. But, the trial is 3 hours away and no evidence is allowed to be admitted or witnesses called. This shows a clear lack of due process. The Guantanomo Bay detainess could probably relate. Because it is in a time of war, it is justified that they not be given a fair trial. The men are ordered to be executed, but not before a dramatic scene with Private Arnaud (Joe Turkel).

Wen a priest comes to deliver the news to the three accused that they will be executed. Private Arnaud becomes belligerent. He refuses to pray or confess because he would feel like a hypocrite for not being religious prior to learning that he would die. After punching the priest, he is knocked into a wall and is fatally wounded. 

Of the three men who were shot as cowards none were as big of a coward as General Mireau. Instead of coming to terms with is own mistake, sacrificing innocent lives of soldiers to progress his career, he chooses to act on his shame induced narcissism. Kubrick’s theme is unrelenting and he sacrifices the lives of the men in order to drive home his themes as only he can. Kubrick doesn’t give much gratification for karmic wrong-doings of the Generals, but in the case of Roget, he makes him pay. Dax ordered Roget to be the executioner, obviously aware of his past indiscretion of killing his peer, as well as his decision to choose the three men who were going to be murdered. Dax felt that he owed it to Roget to teach him a lesson. He would never forgive himself for shooting three innocent men in the head that he had condemned, unlike the man he carelessly blew up with a grenade and then wrote off on a whim. 

Dax quotes Samuel Johnson on patriotism saying that it is “the last refuge of the scoundrel". With the rhetoric of today’s nationalist “patriots” we see this quote play out in draconian immigration laws as well as a justification for massive military spending and the patriot act itself. Not to mention two wars which, if opposed, you may very likely be called unpatriotic. The final scene mocks the same sense of patriotism. The captured girl singing to all the drunken soldiers is weeping. Usually, a song at the end of a film would illicit warm fuzzy closure but Paths of Glory is absent of nostalgia. Instead, we feel remorse and disgust and reflection. This scene hits the heart the film’s themes and ties it all together in an unforgettable way.