[HN Gopher] Dr Strangelove at 60
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Dr Strangelove at 60
Author : wyclif
Score : 101 points
Date : 2024-01-29 14:38 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| throw0101d wrote:
| "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" --
| #64,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFI%27s_100_Years...100_Movie_...
| dano wrote:
| My favorite bit of irony.
| mynameisash wrote:
| My teenage kids regularly quote that line. Along with Monty
| Python and the Holy Grail, Strangelove is one of their (and my)
| favorite old movies.
|
| For anyone that hasn't seen it, it really is a fantastic dark
| comedy.
| alexb_ wrote:
| I think about the Soviets gaining control of our "precious
| bodily fluids" all the time. One of the best comedies ever
| made.
|
| I also remember hearing that Kurbrick very intentionally put
| in a ton of sexual metaphors throughout the entire movie - a
| lot of the scenes and lines (especially the opening one
| refueling the bomber) change when you view it from that
| perspective!
| jacquesm wrote:
| As well as the final scene.
| tharmas wrote:
| Its one of the best movies of all time. That bomb ride is
| ICONIC!
| dang wrote:
| Sorry for the offtopicness but could you please email
| hn@ycombinator.com? I want to send you some repost invites!
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Was going to downvote for unhelpful snark until I realized
| who this was.
| linsomniac wrote:
| "Based on the findings of the report, my conclusion was that this
| idea was not a practical deterrent for reasons which at this
| moment must be all too obvious."
| LanceH wrote:
| "As you know, the premier loves surprises."
| jasomill wrote:
| "Mein Fuhrer...I can walk!"
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Reportedly ad-libbed when he accidentally got up from his
| wheelchair.
| cglace wrote:
| "Mr. President, we must not allow... a mine shaft gap!"
| scotty79 wrote:
| Current discussions about military AI race against China remind
| me of this.
|
| Obviously the only valid response is to build the humanity
| murdering robots first. We must not allow the gap to form.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _One to embody power, the other to crave it._ --DH aka DB
|
| See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygon_(film)
| arethuza wrote:
| "That was a documentary." - Daniel Ellsberg talking about Dr
| Strangelove:
|
| https://slate.com/culture/2017/12/the-doomsday-machine-danie...
| razakel wrote:
| Kubrick was even investigated by the FBI because he got the
| interior of the then-classified B-52 bomber almost exactly
| correct.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| Has there been an explanation for that? Did he have inside
| intel or did he get a little lucky?
| razakel wrote:
| It was just guesswork based on other aircraft.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Slim Pickens does the right thing when he rides the bomb into
| hell.
|
| A classic film.
| therealfiona wrote:
| "He'll see everything! He'll see the big board!"
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| "That is precisely the idear, General. That is precisely the
| idear."
| hyggetrold wrote:
| "Sir, I think it's hardly fair to condemn an entire program just
| because of a single slip-up!"
| daverol wrote:
| Dr Strangelove himself seems to be the perfect prototype for a
| modern tech entrepreneur: The type of mad techno bro who relishes
| the opportunity to apply his hair-brained schemes to fix real
| world problems. The worse things get the more he bubbles with
| excitement and throws out outlandish solutions.
| neuromanser wrote:
| *hare-brained. Nice eggcorn! :)
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eggcorn
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| Probably the greatest satire put to film. It's hard not to rank
| this among Kubrick's best, although, honestly, that's due in part
| to the intense subject. Great retrospective in the OP - I've
| always loved that transformation in production, where Stanley
| realized that the thriller could only ever be filmed as perfect
| pitch-black comedy. Maybe a little telling on Kubrick's
| character, but what a fantastic decision.
|
| Every war creates in its climax the perfect weapon for the
| fighting of that war just past. In World War II, the denouement
| of the western colonialist systems, exploitation was so perfected
| that victory became genocide. So, with brutal logic, the war
| created the perfect weapon for eliminating whole peoples, along
| with their land, their water, their pets[1], etc. In the 1960s,
| America had this perfected weapon of WW2, but had not experienced
| directly the circumstances of total war that had brought it
| about, and not gained the painful wisdom accumulated[2].
| Strangelove is in part a story of medieval generals jousting with
| dynamite strapped to the tips of their lances. And, as it turns
| out, that's pretty funny.
|
| [1] Hat tip to Oliver Reed's shambling Vulcan in Gilliam's
| _Munchausen_ here.
|
| [2] And had gained a cancerous homunculus in the form of
| Strangelove himself, the last vestige of colonialism's final
| form.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| "A guy could have a good time in ~~Dallas~~Vegas with all that
| stuff." (Had to be ADR'd to "Vegas" since the Kennedy
| assassination was too recent to stick with Kong's preferred
| "Dallas".)
| sidcool wrote:
| One of the best movies ever made. It was my first Kubrick movie.
| And then I was hooked. And this is where I became George Scott
| fan.
| xamuel wrote:
| Some observations I've made about the film and haven't seen
| anyone else make:
|
| * "Strangelove" = "Strangle" + "Glove"
|
| * In many war room scenes, if you squint, the table looks like a
| mushroom cloud. The circular light above the table is the "halo"
| of the mushroom cloud.
|
| * When Mandrake first learns what General Ripper is up to, at one
| point the camera angle makes it look like Mandrake is a tiny doll
| of a man standing on General Ripper's desk.
|
| * The film features many nested levels of self-destruct systems
| interfering with each other. The Doomsday Device, the decision to
| help the USSR shoot down the bombers, even the bomber's own self-
| destruct system (which ironically blows itself up, not the plane,
| and in the process destroys the decoder system so the crew can't
| receive the recall code). For example, if the president hadn't
| helped the USSR attack the bombers, then said decoder wouldn't
| have been destroyed, and Armageddon would've been avoided.
|
| * The closing scenes feature real atomic blast footage, some with
| ships nearby. Some analysts incorrectly think this is a
| continuity error, as the Doomsday Device was landlocked. But in
| fact it's perfectly consistent with the last lines of dialog:
| even post-Doomsday Device, mankind cannot even get along to
| escape into the mineshafts peacefully, instead entering a full-
| scale nuclear conflict despite the futility of it all.
| powera wrote:
| The passcode "O P E" isn't "Peace On Earth", it is the first
| letters of the word "Open".
| mynameisash wrote:
| This "decoder system" is called a CRM-114 discriminator, a name
| which is also used as a spam-detection program[0,1]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRM114_(program)
|
| [1] https://crm114.sourceforge.net/
| el_snark wrote:
| The final scene of Dr. Strangelove is a powerful metaphor for the
| current state of Twitter
| blululu wrote:
| Something I learned recently is that the film was not exactly
| singular: Failsafe - a different movie about a Nuclear Incident
| was being developed at the same time. Stanley Kubrick and
| Columbia sued them reached a settlement to delay the release of
| the more serious movie starting Henry Fonda.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail_Safe_(1964_film)#Lawsuit
| noefingway wrote:
| For the "Dr Strangelove" fans that haven't seen "Failsafe" I
| recommend watching it and "Seven Days in May". IMHO Larry
| Hagman provides a compelling performance as Henry Fonda's
| translator trying to get the translation and nuances of emotion
| from the Soviet premier.
|
| All three were released in 1964 and provide different takes on
| the anxieties of the era. We used to joke a lot about having to
| hide under our desks (lived in the DC suburbs) during the air
| raid drills, lot of good that would do when the nukes dropped!
| euroderf wrote:
| Both recommendations seconded. FWIW, Failsafe is a great
| example of film minimalism.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| 3 of my favourite films of the decade.
| stared wrote:
| To me, "Don't Look Up" is a sequel to "Dr Strangelove"
| (obviously, not nearly as iconic, but still).
|
| The core parts are the same: the looming existential danger of
| the time and the irresponsibility of the most influential people,
| making things from bad to worse.
| uoaei wrote:
| _Don 't Look Up_ is excellent and I believe only would have
| been improved if it was directed by the Safdie brothers.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| Big difference is that the character of the President is very
| competent and does everything right as the situtation develops.
| He is the only character with common sense, alongside the
| British officer. The failures of the system are beyond his
| control.
|
| The text implies that the elected officials act in the people's
| interests, and that they are actually good at their jobs -- but
| that it isn't enough to go against the military. Don't Look Up
| presents an even bleaker perspective IMO.
| leotravis10 wrote:
| The Criterion Collection's packaging for the film is very unique
| I must say:
|
| https://www.criterion.com/films/28822-dr-strangelove-or-how-...
|
| https://criterion-production.s3.amazonaws.com/carousel-files...
| rdtsc wrote:
| One of the strange things is that the Soviets had eventually
| developed something similar as described in the movie. It was as
| automated as in the movie but the general idea is the same
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand also called Perimeter
| (Perimetr).
|
| There is an interesting point in the movie that the idea was to
| always inform the opponent about it, so they don't even dare
| strike first. But the system was kept secret, at least
| officially, for many years. One of the designers explained that
| the other purpose of the system was to protect against hot-headed
| generals who, on short notice or from a faulty warning signal,
| may panic and launch an attack. In that case it wasn't necessary
| to advertise the system.
|
| My idea is that the opponent (US) also knew about it from
| intelligence channels, and the Soviet knew that US knew, and that
| was enough. There was no point in officially making it public.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| The US invested in an airborne command center so that even in
| the event of a catastrophic sneak attack someone would still be
| alive to order a retaliation strike.
| throw0101d wrote:
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-4
|
| A program for a replacement is in-progress:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivable_Airborne_Operation
| s...
|
| Russia also has an airborne command plane:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-80
| mongol wrote:
| Is Dr Strangelove a caricature of Kissinger? I heard that in an
| Adam Curtis documentary.
| chuckadams wrote:
| He's based mostly on Edward Teller, progenitor of the H-bomb,
| with a good dollop of Werner Von Braun thrown in for flavor.
| pi-e-sigma wrote:
| Edward Teller wasn't even a German and he never worked for
| the Nazis. Unlike Werner von Braun.
| neuromanser wrote:
| I'm sure glad it's still under copyright: how else would we
| motivate Stanley Kubrick to make more movies?
| cf100clunk wrote:
| Celebrated in The Guardian:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/29/dr-strangelove-...
| GMoromisato wrote:
| By coincidence, I just watched this again last week and it still
| holds up.
|
| I think it's interesting that Mutually Assured Destruction--which
| Kubrick thought "insane"--turned out to be a stable state in a
| game-theory sense. In fact, when Reagan tried to move away from
| MAD by building anti-missile defense, most analysts thought it
| would be MORE dangerous: If the US were to make Russian missiles
| "impotent and obsolete" then the Soviets would be tempted to use
| them or lose them. Good thing it failed.
|
| And if anti-nuclear activists had succeeded in ridding the world
| of nuclear weapons, we'd probably be sending US Marines to
| Ukraine, sparking another world war.
|
| Maybe it's only the continuation of MAD that kept the world safe.
| That's surely the kind of absurd irony that Kubrick would have
| approved of.
| darkteflon wrote:
| This is such a great comment.
|
| It did, however, remind me of Zhou Enlai's quip when asked
| about the impact of the French Revolution: "Too early to say."
| Jeema101 wrote:
| One of my favorite movie monologues of all time is the speech
| Slim Pickens' character gives to the crew when he realizes that
| their mission isn't an exercise. It's so delightfully absurd:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ynY5NvYsZY
| barrkel wrote:
| Does anyone else find Kubrick's movies weirdly bloodless? They
| are technically excellent but they leave me completely unmoved,
| they have zero purchase on my emotions. Dr Strangelove not an
| exception.
|
| The effect is a bit like Preacher and people without a soul. The
| movie shows me images and I see them, but almost like abstract
| art.
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