Retrospective Film Review

Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) • 60 Years Later — exploding with shrewd, absurd hilarity

An insane US general orders a bombing attack on the Soviet Union, triggering a path to nuclear holocaust that a war room full of politicians and generals frantically tries to stop.

From the opening shot of Stanley Kubrick’s comedy classic Dr. Strangelove, you know you’re entering a beautifully daft film. A stern voiceover lays out the stakes: a doomsday device, hidden and potent enough to reduce the entire planet to a heap of smouldering ash. But then, in a cheeky wink to the audience, Kubrick cuts to a dreamlike sequence that wouldn’t be out of place in a soothing airline commercial: footage of a fighter pilot soars with melodic music and a wacky, irreverent font. Here, in the face of total annihilation, everything feels perversely funny.

The Cold War anxieties explored in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb…