Dr. Strangelove was released in 1964, just two years before the Cuban Missile Crisis, a year after the assassination of JFK, and precisely at the time when US involvement in Vietnam was escalating to greatest intensity. Sure, it was the perfect time for a serious filmic representation of the significance of the Cold War turning nuclear. The greatness of Dr. Strangelove lies in its absolute lack of seriousness, which, paradoxically, is what made and makes it such a serious treatment of such a significant subject.

In essence, the film is an ascerbic satire of the politics that made the mutually assured destruction (MADness) that would result from the Soviet Union and the United States engaging in nuclear war.

The scene is set: two nuclear powers on the brink of war. But what gives Kubrick’s treatment of this reality is the invention of rogue general Jack Ripper (there is too much allusion in the film to keep up a commentary). The premise of the film’s comic catastrophe is that certain US officers to order a retaliatory nuclear strike against the Soviet Union, in the event that the Soviets have destroyed US command through a first strike. It’s called ‘Plan R’, the ‘R’ seemingly denoting ‘Retaliation’, but certainly also ‘Reverse’, a gear that this figural jet bomber doesn’t possess.

Dr. Strangelove gets its narrative impetus from general Ripper’s paranoid belief that the Soviets have infiltrated US water supplies and are polluting Americans’ ‘precious bodily fluids’—a sex joke with the ironic sting of a flagellate whipcrack: nuclear war will ensure no sperm is passed to any other generation, anyway. Delusional, MAD, Ripper launches Plan R. There is a way that Plan R can be called off, but it requires a code known only by the authorising general, Ripper.

There’s a plan to storm the airbase and somehow force Ripper to call the attack off. In the meantim, at the Pentagon, the President and top brass decide to bring in the Soviet diplomats, telling them of the situation. The madness of it all is given full ironic force when the Soviets notify their US counterparts that they, too, have a retaliatory mechanism. It’s a doomsday machine that will go off, automatically, if ever the Soviets are attacked.

That’s the central premise, and I won’t go too much further with the plot—in terms of action, there is little of it anyway. The excellence of Dr. Strangelove derives from the sabier wit of its dialogue, each line the pantomime sword-thrust of a duel (the word duel derives from the Latin words bellum and dualis, together meaning war of two). It is only fitting that the Cold War—a war of coded plans, bomb recall codes, and radio signals—plays out as a comic battle of words.

Consider the moment the United States and the Soviet Union first talk to one another: US President Muffley (Peter Sellers) calls Soviet Premier Kissov to inform him that one of his generals “went and did a silly thing”. It takes some time to get to this point, as Muffley finds the music on Kissov’s end too loud, then there’s a carnival carousel of turning confirmations that they can hear one another ‘fine’, spinning on to the platitudes that they themselves are also both ‘fine’, before the music stops, the amusements halt, and Muffley gets to the point that one of his generals ‘went and did a silly thing’. After informing Kissov that nuclear bombs are en route, he assures him, ‘It’s a friendly call. Of course it’s a friendly call’, and then the ironic turn: ‘Listen, if it wasn’t friendly … you probably wouldn’t have even got it’. The meta-irony of the scene is that Kissov is never on camera and we only ever hear Muffley’s words: although the purpose of the call is dialogue, Muffley is really talking to himself.

It's Sellers playing the part of Muffley, but Sellers importantly also plays two other characters in the film: British RAF officer Mandrake, who is on exchange at General Ripper’s airbase; and the titular Dr. Srangelove.

Strangelove is a nuclear expert and former Nazi. He is wheelchair-bound, signifying, no-doubt Germany’s debilitating wounds from the last World War. But his role in the film as the nuclear expert is critical because, once again with terrible irony, it is the defeated German who must explain the MAD logic to the supposed victors of the previous war. Muffley questions Strangelove about the workings of the Russian doomsday device: ‘But, how is it possible for this thing to be triggered automatically, and at the same time impossible to untrigger?’ Strangelove is an expert nuclear physicist of computational genius, but any audience member understands the logic of his explanation of the questioned possibility: ‘Mr. President, it is not only possible, it is essential. That is the whole idea of this machine, you know’.

The irony, the humour, the madness—it continues to the end of the film. However, at its end, the audience walks away with feeling slightly strange about the title. As the credits role, Vera Lynn’s song ‘We’ll Meet Again’ is played. It’s the beloved World War Two anthem that emblemised a faith that deployed would one day see their loved ones again. An anachronistic song choice to end, but perhaps Dr. Strangelove, like Dr. Strangelove, offers necessary instruction of a former lesson.

Only this time, given it’s nuclear, there’s one final irony: none of us will ever meet again.