Tonight we watched Dr. Strangelove, and even though it’s technically a brilliant movie in every way, I find it hard to believe it’s one of my dad’s favorite films. He’s a rather optimistic person and not nihilistic, so I couldn’t help but wonder why he considered it a favorite.
For me, it’s too real and too relevant to be anything but distressing. In Dr. Strangelove, the hamstringing of goodhearted, quick-thinking, competent characters is a stylistic choice to achieve the perfect nightmare scenario rather than an accurate reflection of reality. I have to choose to believe that in this overwhelmingly complex system we inhabit, there are forces of order as well as chaos, that just as mistakes and accidents happen, people also notice and amend them, and this vision of a rube goldberg machine of death is a fantasy, similar to the fantasies of superheros saving the day. If I can’t believe that there are forces balancing out the malicious chaos of incompetence, madness, and unchecked power, I spend every peaceful moment imagine those mushroom clouds blooming into the strata, the end of life and everything we know.
Dr. Strangelove toys with its audience, again and again showing us the path to salvation only for the tracks the traincar of inexorable doom to turn and resume its course of hopelessness. I can easily understand admiration for the film’s sharp writing, iconic imagery, and impressive performances. But there are so many other films of high quality, and to treasure the feeling of screaming, impotent despair that this one encapsulates is something else entirely that I can’t wrap my head around.