s swirling cloudscapes fill the screen, a solemn narrator informs us of mysterious Soviet doings on some faraway hidden islands. Then we cut to two U.S. bomber aircraft refueling in midair in a kind of romantic ballet scored to "Try a Little Tenderness." Only then do the first humans appear.
We are at Burpelson Air Force Base, the fiefdom of Gen. Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden). A cigar-chomping loony fixated on the integrity of his "precious bodily fluids," Ripper has just issued orders to the 30-some bombers under his command to attack the Soviet Union, under the pretext that the United States has already been attacked. These planes are always in the air, just two hours from their targets. The base is put on red alert and sealed off from the world. Ripper's next-in-command is the British officer Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers, in one of three roles). When Mandrake discovers that Ripper has gone mad and overstepped his powers, he confronts his superior. But Ripper easily gets the ineffectual Mandrake under his thumb, and the apocalyptic juggernaut rolls on.
We are introduced to the second of our three main sets of characters when we cut to the interior of a single bomber piloted by Major T.J. "King" Kong (Slim Pickens), en route to its Russian targets. Having received their deadly orders, the crew—including a very young James Earl Jones as Lt. Lothar Zogg—shifts into full battle mode, breaking out top-secret file folders and survival kits and indulging in an orgy of switch-flipping and jargon.
Our final venue will be the upper strata of power. We first meet Gen. "Buck" Turgidson (George C. Scott) as he dallies intimately with his secretary. Informed of Ripper's mad scheme, Turgidson quickly ends up in the war room, where President Merkin Muffley (Sellers) has convened his advisors and secretaries to handle the crisis. Among this brain trust is Dr. Strangelove (Sellers), an ex-Nazi genius who is the voice of self-serving "rational science."
Having established the tripartite division of the film, Kubrick will now cycle among the protagonists. We witness Ripper and Mandrake as the base comes under attack from soldiers sent by the president, leading to Ripper's defeat and ultimate suicide. Mandrake manages to piece together the "recall code" to save the day, but then has a hellacious time trying to convince Col. "Bat" Guano (Keenan Wynn) to allow him to call the president. Meanwhile, the politicians and generals in the war room have invited into their sanctum the Soviet ambassador (who reveals the existence of a doomsday machine that will wipe all life from the globe) and established communications with the Soviet premier, despite the paranoid rantings and warnings of Turgidson and the Machiavellian advice of Strangelove. Onboard Kong's bomber, the crew faithfully follow orders, contending with Russian attacks that jam the bomb-bay doors, leading to Kong's famous manual release of the bomb, which he rides to earth.
In the end, despite the best efforts of everyone, the Soviet doomsday device explodes in a montage of mushroom clouds against the tune "We'll Meet Again."
Timely and timeless satire
What can one say about the work of a certified genius such as Kubrick? He was a meticulous, exacting craftsman who possessed a sharp, uncompromising vision that he brought to the screen through careful and thoughtful touches. (His reputation for firmness of hand shows in the way he treated Peter George's novel, which, reputedly, bears little resemblance to the film.) For instance, consider the main theme of this film—at least as I interpret it—that systems and machines have come to rule mankind, rather than the other way around. From the opening shot of the copulating airplanes through the intricacies of the bomber technology (the men in the plane seem literally wired into position, in some early version of The Matrix), through the final fusion of man and missile, as Slim Pickens straddles a bomb that has become a steel phallus, Kubrick reiterates with subtle visuals that humanity is no longer in the saddle.
But it's not even so much the hardware that tyrannizes us as it is the software, the net of rules and laws and plans and regulations. This message comes across insistently, even in such minor instances as when the telephone operator insists on correct change from a desperate Peter Sellers trying to save the world. True, Ripper seems to be solely culpable for the disaster. But as the dialogue between President Muffley and Gen. Turgidson about the nature of "Plan R" shows us, it's really the autonomous nature of such schemes that is the prime mover.
Of course, all the directorial finesse in the world would be wasted without stellar performances, and Kubrick gets them here. Sellers in his three roles exhibits a huge range, from bumbling to righteously angry to maniacal. Hayden is frighteningly insane, and Scott is mangificently bombastic while being good-hearted according to his own moral compass.
And the writing is super-sharp, owing its cutting edge to that famed '60s iconoclast Terry Southern, who provided numerous quotable lines. "You can't fight in here, this is the war room!" And although the Cold War per se has been superseded by newer (and arguably even scarier) realpolitik scenarios, the basic dichotomy between the inertia and malignancy of systems versus the short-sighted fumbling of individuals still holds weight.
The film remains glorious to look at, with crisp black-and-white photography and stunningly composed shots (the long views of the war room that reduce the participants to antlike figures are brilliant). The mattes of zooming planes and barren landscapes hold up well. True, some of the ambiance and referents seem dated. For instance, I suspect that President Muffley is supposed to recall Adalai Stevenson, a forgotten figure to anyone younger than 50. And the lack of women in the film, while fully intentional (as verified by Strangelove's riff about 10 women for every surviving man), seems chauvinistically dated. But the savage keeness and horrifying plausibility of the story remain stingingly vital to this day.
