Stanley Kubrick - Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) (BluRay-Rip)

U.S. Air Force General Jack Ripper goes completely and utterly mad, and sends his bomber wing to destroy the U.S.S.R. He suspects that the communists are conspiring to pollute the "precious bodily fluids" of the American people. The U.S. president meets with his advisors, where the Soviet ambassador tells him that if the U.S.S.R. is hit by nuclear weapons, it will trigger a "Doomsday Machine" which will destroy all plant and animal life on Earth. Peter Sellers portrays the three men who might avert this tragedy: British Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, the only person with access to the demented Gen. Ripper; U.S. President Merkin Muffley, whose best attempts to divert disaster depend on placating a drunken Soviet Premier and the former Nazi genius Dr. Strangelove, who concludes that "such a device would not be a practical deterrent for reasons which at this moment must be all too obvious". Will the bombers be stopped in time, or will General Jack Ripper succeed in destroying the world?

Convencido de que los comunistas están contaminando a la nación americana, un general ordena, en un acceso de locura, un ataque aéreo nuclear por sorpresa sobre la Unión Soviética. Su ayudante, el capitán Mandrake trata de averiguar el código para detener el bombardeo. Para solucionar el problema, el presidente de EE. UU. se comunica con Moscú para convencer al dirigente soviético de que el ataque es un estúpido error. Mientras tanto, el asesor del presiente, un antiguo científico nazi, D. Strangelove, confirma la existencia de la “Máquina del Juicio Final”, un dispositivo de represalia soviético capaz de acabar con la humanidad para siempre.




Stanley Kubrick's brilliant, satirical, provocative black comedy/fantasy regarding doomsday and Cold War politics, features an accidental, inadvertent, pre-emptive nuclear attack. The undated, landmark film -the first commercially-successful political satire about nuclear war- has been inevitably compared to another similar suspense film released at the same time, the much-more-serious and melodramatic Fail-Safe (1964). However, this was a cynically objective, Monty Python-esque, humorous, biting response to the apocalyptic fears of the 1950s.




The witty screenplay, co-authored by the director (with Terry Southern), was based on Peter George's novel Red Alert (the U.S. title). Early drafts of the script were titled Edge of Doom and The Delicate Balance of Terror. The novel's primary concern was the threat of an accidental nuclear war. Dr. Strangelove himself did not appear in the novel, however - he was added by Kubrick and co-screenwriter Southern.

The mid-1960s film's nightmarish, apocalyptic theme was about how technology had gone haywire and had dominated humanity. The film's anti-war fears actually became a plausible scenario, shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy, the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the heated-up intensification of the Cold War and nuclear arms race. The satirical film's release was delayed from December 12, 1963 to late January, 1964 due to Kennedy's assassination in late November.




However, Columbia Pictures had to include a disclaimer at the film's beginning:
It is the stated position of the United States Air Force that their safeguards would prevent the occurrence of such events as are depicted in this film. Furthermore, it should be noted that none of the characters portrayed in this film are meant to represent any real persons living or dead.

The funny, frightening, dark film cleverly cuts back and forth mid-scene (and increases in rapidity as the film draws to an insane close) from three main set locations, each with their own distinctive camera styles:
* a locked office in a sealed-off Air Force command base of a psychotic, impotent bomb-group commander who is zealously convinced that the Russians have devised water fluoridation to weaken American men - filmed with a cinema verite, documentary style.
* the cramped, flight deck interior of the B-52 bomber sent to destroy the Soviets with a preemptive strike - led by a Southern-accented, gung-ho major - often filmed using close-up shots.
* the Pentagon's huge underground War Room where an inept US President has convened an advisory staff - including a saber-rattling general (and other military brass), a Soviet ambassador, and a crazed German nuclear scientist speaking to each other over considerable distances - usually seen in long, static camera shots.



There were a total of four Academy Award nominations (with no wins) for the film: Best Picture, Best Actor (Peter Sellers), Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It lost the first three Oscars to the popular My Fair Lady (1964), and the Screenplay award to Becket (1964).

Dr. Strangelove is most memorable for Peter Sellers' Oscar-nominated, masterful performances in three distinct roles in two of the three set locales, similar to his various identities in Kubrick's Lolita (1962). In addition to numerous sexual images and jokes throughout the film (including large phallic cigars, mating airplanes, guns, Ripper's impotent "loss of essence", and the orgasmic atomic bomb that Kong rides between his legs), many of the absurd, omnipresent names of the male, military characters (caricatures) have sexual connotations or allegorical references that suggest the connection between war, sexual obsession and the male sex drive.

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Dr. Strangelove se inscribe, a partir de la novela de Peter George publicada en 1958, dentro del campo de la ciencia-ficción política e inicia la trilogía de obras maestras que Kubrick dispensó al género, y que completaron 2001: Una odisea del espacio -bajo un prisma científico- y La naranja mecánica -como parábola social-. Las tres propuestas tienen principalmente una constante común: la acerba crítica indagadora de los angustiosos interrogantes que el hombre se plantea ante su destino. Y es que Kubrick estaba obsesionado por la aterradora soledad de la muerte.

Los personajes del film son meras piezas dentro del engranaje de esta sátira implacable que supone. Tratados en tono de humor negro responden a una imagen caricaturesca (Jack D. Ripper = Jack el Destripador; Capitán Mandrake = Capitán Mandrágora; General "Buck" Turgidson = General "Hinchazón de Macho"; Mayor T. J. "King" Kong = Mayor King Kong; Dr. Strangelove = Doctor Amor Extraño), pero, a su vez, a una lógica en el desarrollo de los acontecimientos que provoca en el espectador una sensación de desesperanza e impotencia inimaginables. Otro registro importante de la cinta es su alegoría sexual. Las primeras imágenes nos muestran dos aviones SAC repostando combustible en pleno vuelo, formando una clara postura de coito; el general Jack D. Ripper (magnífico Sterling Hayden) manda bombardear la URSS a consecuencia de su impotencia sexual (sublimada por medio de un fálico puro siempre en ristre); el B-52 de Kong es, a su vez, fálico y busca desesperadamente el objetivo, constituyendo el auténtico clímax de la película en la explosión final; el doctor Strangelove propone un plan de supervivencia en el que cada hombre tendrá diez mujeres a su disposición, plan que es aprobado entusiásticamente por todos.

Técnicamente perfecta, con una sabia utilización del zoom, escenas bélicas de gran veracidad rodadas cámara en mano, y una reconstrucción milimétrica -sala de la guerra, cabina de vuelo del B-52, planes de defensa-, ¿Teléfono rojo? Volamos hacia Moscú es una comedia de pesadilla que no ha envejecido lo más mínimo, sino al contrario, teniendo en cuenta los tiempos que corren se hace más vigente que nunca. Además es toda una lección de cine que nos da ese genio que fue Stanley Kubrick.

Script/Guión: Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, Peter George (novel)
Music/Sonido: Laurie Johnson
Cinematography/Fotografía: Gilbert Taylor (B&W)
Cast/Reparto: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, James Earl Jones, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, Peter Bull, Tracy Reed, Jack Creley, Frank Berry, Glenn Beck, Shane Rimmer, Paul Tamarin, Gordon Tanner, Robert O'Neil, Roy Stephens