ZZZZZZZZZZZZING!!!

Are you trying to say that the maker of 2001, A Clockwork Orange, Paths of Glory, Spartacus, and of course, Dr. Strangelove, was apolitical?
To paraphrase that old Yiddish joke: No, Frameone. You’re the moron!

stupidbaby: Your name says it all.

And now, once again, I find this thread annoying, and this blog as unsubstantial and inconsequential as I remembered it.

I now remember why I left.

We (at least I) am saying that yes Strangelove is dated but that it is a great movie and should be appreciated as such – and not as a serious predictor of actual events and trends. It reflected brilliantly how some people perceived conditions in those times.

bz,

What can one say. You assert that the characters in Strangelove aren’t overly broad? Really? Did you think about that at all before you wrote it?

Strangelove:

No sir… Right arm rolls his wheelchair backwards. Excuse me. Struggles with wayward right arm, ultimately subduing it with a beating from his left.

Also when… when they go down into the mine everyone would still be alive. There would be no shocking memories, and the prevailing emotion will be one of nostalgia for those left behind, combined with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead! Ahhhh! Right are reflexes into Nazi salute. He pulls it back into his lap and beats it again. Gloved hand attempts to strangle him.

Kubrick was an artist, a fiction filmmaker. You guys keep criticizing Strangelove as dated or because it wasn’t an “accurate” portrayal of our nuclear policy and plan. How pedantic and pinched can you get?

Kubrick was using the Cold War dynamics as a vehicle for saying something much larger about the human condition. Kubrick was known to be obsessed with getting all the little details right but that’s just an image. He cared about the details a great deal but he never let accuracy compromise his larger statement because his themes are far larger, more timeless and universal than whether or not the US has a sound nuclear policy.

Jesus, you are a total moron, Frank.

The TRUTH is that at the “fail safe” point, the planes were to hold up until they had confirmed permission to proceed.

As I said, the President and the military leadership of this country were not nearly as crazy a Kubrick claimed they were.

Just as Marines like the guy in Full Metal Jacket were mostly fiction. They were usually recycled, and then, if they didn’t make it, they were discharged.

But truth, fiction: Who cares? Let the liberal myths be preserved!

I think this is explains Mr. Willis’ reaction completely. “Strangelove” has always been among my favorite movies, even after first seeing it about 30 years ago. But the reasons why it remains a favorite have changed. Nowadays one thing I enjoy is the odd “straight from the time capsule” feeling I get watching it. Another pleasure is the grateful awareness that those days, the days of MAD and the threat of civilization-ending war, are in the past.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058083/

In the current time of George Bush however (whose harshest critics never imagined in their worst nightmares he would be as stupendously bad as he has turned out to be) those characters don’t look exaggerated in the least. So the humor of the movie is rather a bit more difficult to appreciate.

When real-life people (say, Richard Perle or Michael Ledeen or Jim O’Beirne, for just a couple examples) actually display the mentality of cartoon characters, like Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale, or Snidely Whiplash, the cartoons just lose some of their natural comedic luster by comparison.

Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan were literal incarnations of the fictional advertising character, Joe Isuzu (live actor, but really a cartoon personality). Krauthammer doesn’t suffer a problem with his hand like Strangelove, but otherwise there’s really not very much difference between the two. Bush and his ideological friends are cartoon character embeciles that in years gone by would have been thought ridiculously unrealistic. Alas, when real life imitates comedic art with such horrifying real life-and-death consequences, the humor tends to recede.

The writing in Strangelove – in significant part by Terry Southern – is spectacular, and the film was definitely a landmark in movie history.

The original King Kong might disappoint some viewers too, when compared to the recent version. But it’s still a landmark film, and deserving of all its celebrated recognition.

Strangelove is a great movie not just for what is on the screen, but for its influential place in history.

Actually I’m referring to Curtis LeMay’s possible involvement in Project Control and the contention of journalists like Paul Lashmar that LeMay may have been trying to provoke WWIII without the knowledge or permission of President Eisenhower.

You are the living embodiment of the condition, Dugger.

But perhaps I mispoke. Kubrick returned again and again to the essential absuridity of human rationality.

Think for two seconds about Strangelove and the other Kubrick films I mentioned.

In Strangelove, the characters are all claim to be acting in the rational, indeed, even infallibly rational. They have systems in place, protocols layed out and backup plans forbackup plans for backup plans. Even Gen. Ripper claims an ultimate rationality for his actions.

They all consider themselves hyper rational beings working in hyper rational systems and how does it all end up? They destroy the fucking world.

That same scenario plays out on various levels throughout Kubrick’s films. Ever seen The Killing? The perfect crime, laid out in all its rational precision with even random and chaotic events — the fight at the race track, for instance – all part of the plan or else absorbed into it. And what happens in the end? Well, I don’t want to ruin it for anyone who hasnt seen it.

Look at what happens at the end of the first sequence of Full Metal Jacket?

Kubrick consistently told stories about chaos, chance and the darker sides of human nature undermining every rational attempt to order the universe. He satired the human pretense to reason.

“ultimate absurdity that lies behind all human attempts at rationality. ‘

Have no idea what that means. We ultimately can’t be rational?? If we are, then, irrational, how do we know we are irrational?

Porco,

Maybe you are joking. The SAC plan back then was to render war impossible by leaving no doubt in the minds of old Stalinists that they would be hit hard if they conducted a sneak attack. Hence ‘fail safe’ etc. Strangelove shows that method (incorrectly – but entertainingly) failing. In reality it worked, worked well. Nuclear war between the superpowers didn’t happen and now will likely never happen. At that time, I believe a credible threat of deterrence, what with the perceived Russian technolocical superiority (Sputnik, Gargarin, mega instead of kilo ton nukes), was a key to preventing the Russians from striking.

ROFL.

“Strangelove reflects the deep cynicism of the time about the cold war, and what we ‘knew’ about the total unsurvivability and likelihood of nuclear war. In reality, our generals knew more and performed better than George or Kubrick imagined.”

I don’t know if I buy that completely… Especially now that it’s been revealed that Curtis LeMay had been a strong advocate of the General Jack D. Ripper plan all along.

“Now, al-Maliki, you know how we’ve always talked about something going wrong with the war… The Iraq War…”

It’s that but it’s much more than that if you look at in the context of Kubrick’s whole career. To write it off as some dated Cold War-specific satire is to ignore the larger theme of the ultimate absurdity that lies behind all human attempts at rationality.

But think of the achievement of Dr. Strangelove: a black comedy about nuclear annihilation just a year or two after the Cuban missile crisis! I mean, it’s no Old School or Van Wilder’s Got Himself a Venereal Disease, but it’s close.

Nah, I think he was based on Edward Teller–the creator of the H-Bomb.