|
Neither bang nor whimper for Stanley Kubrick's apocalypse, just the death's-head fixed smirk at humanity's screwball extinction. Mating rituals of aircraft (cf. Sternberg's Jet Pilot), subtle derangements of the Hawksian group aboard the bomber headed for "nuclear toe-to-toe with the Russkies." Doomsday orders from the delusional general (Sterling Hayden), purity is his albatross, cigars and "grain alcohol and rainwater" make for a baleful regimen. The gum-chewing hawk (George C. Scott) extricates himself from his secretary long enough to assess the situation at the Pentagon: "I admit the human element seems to have failed us here..." The President is an empty suit, herbivorous-looking to contrast with the red meat dangling around him, one in a trio of Peter Sellers caricatures. His gentlest turn is a RAF captain (the stiff upper lip is a touching anachronism rattling in a chamber of computers), his wildest creation is the eponymous adviser, a grinning holdover from German expressionism. "Imperialist stooges," "commie stooges," a plague o' both your houses. The arms race to the finish—a characteristically scabrous trenchancy on men's games of sex and death expands the modish flipness of coarse gags and punning names. "Peace is Our Profession," says an Air Force base sign, the raid is a blueprint for Full Metal Jacket and the madman's notes reappear in The Shining. A most awkward telephone call in the War Room, where dashes on the illuminated board become cartoon lines around uniformed dolts. The bovine colonel (Keenan Wynn) searching for "preverts" and finding a Coca-Cola facial shows Terry Southern's hand, Slim Pickens hee-hawing astride the bombshell is duly noted by Russ Meyer. The endgame is a century of "radioactive half-life," the prospect of it jerks the ghoulish theoretician exultantly out of his wheelchair and onto his feet just in time for a mushroom-cloud serenade. "We'll meet again," Kubrick keeps the date in 2001: A Space Odyssey. With Peter Bull, James Earl Jones, and Tracy Reed. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |