Review of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) by Matthew D — 05 Jul 2015

A parable of what happens when you believe your own paranoia and propaganda. Kubrick makes a powerful indictment of allowing people who want power to have it and shows in ever funnier and more terrifying ways how people in charge can become divorced from reality.

These are recurrent themes for the director, but they were in some ways expressed best here, in the way only the cold war allowed, even if this makes things less timeless than his other work. As I often find with Kubrick, what its strengths are also its weakness; his famous detached style tricks the viewer into thinking he is portraying things objectively, yet the caricature and separation from reality often overwhelms the proceedings.

(This is especially the case with the eponymous character; things would actually be more effective without him, but at least we get another opportunity to see Peter Sellers act as only he can.) But viewed as the director's own brand of propaganda, one that is after all very hard to disagree with, it is very effective.