Nuclear Jamboree review #1: Dr. Strangelove
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Tracy Reed, Slim Pickens
Black and white, 1964. 93 minutes.
Beyond our imagination
The sun experiences nuclear explosions every single second, creating the raw material for life. But when these explosions happen on Earth they pass beyond the realm of our imagination. Our brains are capable of understanding how to trigger a nuclear reaction — and how to harness its energy for peaceful means — but the sheer power of nuclear energy is, in many senses, too complex for us to fathom. We are biological organisms tottering about on the planet Earth yet we have learned how to imitate the sun.
There is something inherently absurd in this vast difference of scale and power. And the fact that we are capable of blowing all life on earth to smithereens at any given moment of the day — even now — is even more absurd.
Absurdity onscreen
If there is one film that captures the utter absurdity of our methods of administering nuclear power, it is Dr. Strangelove. This black and white 1964 satire examines a strategic mishap in the midst of the Cold War. The U.S. and the Soviet Union are locked in a policy of nuclear deterrence, with each country amassing a nuclear arsenal so large as to discourage the other side from attacking. The rationale is that no country will attack the other for fear of triggering a nuclear holocaust. The solution: build more bombs.
