Dr. Strangelove is a Timeless Comedy Because It's Actually a Tragedy
Dr. Strangelove. Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures.
I have long believed that Dr. Strangelove is the greatest comedy film of all time, and one of the best films of all time period. This is no minor accomplishment, comedy being probably the trickiest genre when it comes to staying power. That’s because humor is largely a social construct - it changes from place to place and over time. This is not true for tragedy or drama. A couple who are madly in love and forced apart, through death of other circumstances - that is universally recognized as something sad, and audiences know that whether they are Japanese, Russian, Thai or American.
But comedy isn’t like that. If you don’t believe me, go to another country and watch a comedic show on a local network. You probably won’t have any fucking idea what is going on, or why it’s supposed to be funny. That’s because comedy takes it cues from social norms and cultural tastes, and these things are not fixed. In the 1980s, for instance, Sixteen Candles was considered to be a funny movie about growing up and the things kids got up to. Nowadays, many people view it much differently and don’t find it funny at all. Some low-brow forms of comedy seem to have broader appeal, like people farting or falling down. But that is the lowest common denominator. Potty humor is not the basis for a classic film, if you ask me.
The flip-side is also true. If you showed Seinfeld to someone from another country, they are likely to be baffled by why anyone would consider it a work of comedic genius. Even many Americans struggle with that. As comedy gets more high-brow, its appeal narrows even further. That’s just the nature of the genre. But it makes it very difficult to create a timeless, classic comedy film that can echo through the ages and still hit with the same power in 2014 as it did in 1964. Dr. Strangelove achieves that. And that is because it is actually a tragedy.
Dr. Strangelove is a political satire directed by Stanley Kubrick relatively early in his career. It benefits from having a superhuman cast, with Peter Sellers playing three different characters, along with George C. Scott and Sterling Hayden. It tells a very tightly structured story about a US bomber accidentally dispatched to drop a nuclear bomb on Russia which cannot be recalled and the frantic efforts by governments on the ground to head off disaster.
It has sharp social and political things to say, and extraordinarily clever jokes that come fast and relentlessly. One of the most famous is delivered by Peter Sellers as President Merkin Muffley who shouts: “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here. This is the War Room!” I’m not in the business of explaining jokes, but the absurdity of such a line speaks for itself. The entire movie simply shines with absurdity, which is one of the things that makes it so brilliant. Everyone is playing an absurd part in an absurd situation.
To be fair, foreign audiences might not get the humor of Strangelove. And probably even modern American audiences wouldn’t get it, either. But it’s generally considered a more consequential film and a more timeless comedy than, say, The 40 Year Old Virgin or any other contemporary comedy. And I think that is because besides the stellar acting, the whipsmart script, the amazing production design (see image above) and of course the vision of one of history’s all-time great directors, at its heart Dr. Strangelove has endured because it uses the trappings of comedy to frame a deeply tragic parable about the annihilation of the human species and the ability of human beings to do these things to ourselves which in 1964 seemed a far more possible outcome than it does now. Although we are certainly trying.
