Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

‘Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room!’ Stanley Kubrick's final word on the fear of nuclear war: an apocalyptic comedy in which only madness still functions according to the laws of causality, whilst reason has long since been beaten to a pulp in some dark corner. Sterling Hayden as General Jack D. Ripper puffs on his cigar and sends a squadron of bombers against the Soviet Union to preserve the purity of the juices. As a crippled Nazi scientist who, in the face of the apocalypse, becomes necrophilically aroused from his wheelchair, Peter Sellers steers humanity into the abyss. Kubrick orchestrates the madness with a cold-blooded detachment, using scathing wit and casual realism, as an inevitable ride to death. Its finale is accompanied by a Vera Lynn hit: “We’ll meet again, some sunny day ...” (C.H.)