Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

* All quotations are from Dudley Andrew's Concepts in Film

** What I thought about/reflected upon as I was wrting this  

"All films present themselves to us as real image according to various ratios." 

“Representation acts as a special kind of label allowing us to identify the whole picture before or after we fully immerse ourselves in it.”

"Bazin and Kracauer argue that cinema extends perception, rather than alter it "

"One goal of interpretation has always been to make coincide the world of the reader with that of the writer".

Watching Dr. Strangelove was definitely an experience. It dealt with the Cold War and all the possible horrors that that entailed...and yet it was a comedy. It not only made fun of how gung ho politicians and soldiers were about the threat and possibility of nuclear attacks but also of the often seemingly pointless protocols politicians must go through when dealing with one another instead of just saying what they mean and want and then work together to achieve an outcome that is acceptable to all parties involved.

Another thing I noticed was while the film made the Americans the good guys (as usual) it also mocked them and showed how over simplified they often make things out to be. America = Good. Russia/Soviet Union = Communism = Death, Doom, and Destruction.

Symbolisms and innuendos also play a big part in the movie. The movie was rife with sexual innuendos and imagery from the crazy general's constant paranoia that females are only after his essance to the B-52 soldier's emmergency supplies kit which featured not just what is necessary for suvival, but also pleasure. And then there is that part where the B-52 soldier was straddling the huge (phallic) bomb having the time of his life as the bomb penetrated Soviet defenses and exploded (with a mushroom cloud). These hardly need t be explained and. But aside from the obvious sexual meanings of the film, there were more subtle images that had me thinking like Dr. Strangelove's, the titular character, black glved hand that he could not control and would often do strange things like choke him. This to me represented the fear and paranoia which gripped not only politicians and soldiers but also the rest of the civilian population as tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union coninued to escalate.

While the film isn't going to be added to my list of favorite black and white movies any time soon (I just can't get myself to love Stanley Kubrik's films as much as other people do), I definitely learned to let go and get over how weird it was at first and just enjoy it for the sheer ridiculousness of the hyped up (and yet still very honest) portrayal of the realities of the time when it was made and how it gave me new insight into the nature of war and conflict (male dominated, paranoia driven, and often result from ego and the desire for control).