Dr. Strangelove Response

I noticed in the film Dr. Strangelove that Kubrick used very up close and personal camera angles when a single person was talking. He typically used this technique when shooting General Ripper. He also showed Ripper smoking a cigar and he shot that cut at an upward angle. This certain camera angle portrayed Ripper as a powerful character. I believe this was to show the intensity of his emotions. The actors used facial expressions well to depict their feelings.

I also noticed that the film used music as a way to show the feeling of the film at a certain time. For example, when the fighter pilots were preparing for Plan R the song “The Ants Go Marching…” began playing in the background. This presented a confrontational, upbeat mood showing that they were preparing for battle.

After watching Dr. Strangelove I learned that Kubrick put a lot of small details to portray a certain message in the film. Pilot T.J. Kong’s may have been wearing a cowboy hat to depict his “gung ho,” “shoot first, ask questions later” attitude.

Kubrick left the interpretation of his movie Dr. Strangelove very wide open. “It’s all very elusive and very rich. There’s nothing like trying to create it. It gives you a sense of omnipotence – it’s one of the most exciting things you can find without being under the influence of drugs… If I told you (the meanings of my films) it wouldn’t be ambiguous – and if you don’t discover it for yourself, it wouldn’t mean anything anyway,” says Kubrick. This just shows that there were methods to his madness.

In Stillman’s essay, Stillman provided a number of theories about where Kubrick got his inspiration. There is definitely a distinct resemblance between Dr. Strangelove and Henry Kissinger. Kubrick may have gotten the name Dr. Strangelove from a character in Ian Fleming’s Dr. No, “Jack Strangways.” Another topic in the film was fluoridation. General Ripper ranted about fluoridation to Mandrake. Fluoridation happened to be a debate topic on the talk show “The Nation’s Future.” Henry Kissinger wrote a book called The Necessity for Choice: Prospects for American Foreign Policy. Stillman noticed that a number of General Turgidson’s lines were closely related to lines in Kissinger’s book. In his essay, Stillman stated, “Throughout his career Kubrick was not afraid of borrowing the words and ideas of others and insidiously transforming them for his own ends. And he did not worry endlessly about trying to be original for the pure novelty of it.”