The Stanley Kubrick movie Kazuo Ishiguro calls “genius”
Japanese-British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the most celebrated authors writing in the English language. His first novels, A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World, were well-received, but it was his 1989 work The Remains of the Day that drew the most acclaim and saw him take home a Booker Prize.
Of course, Ishiguro also has ties to the film industry, and The Remains of the Day was adapted for the screen in 1993 in a film starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. In other creative exploits, the writer has also penned a number of screenplays himself, including The White Countess and Living.
In a feature with Criterion, Ishiguro once named his ten favourite films of all time. Within that list, he also drew attention to his favourite Stanley Kubrick movie, the black comedy Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which was originally released in 1964.
“Kubrick made many masterpieces, but this is my favourite,” Ishiguro said. “I watched it on television when I was quite young. It’s a remarkable blend of things that shouldn’t go together; it’s miraculous that Kubrick created the darkest vision you could have of nuclear war and combined it with out-and-out comedy.”
The writer continued: “Watching it, I can see that it tops Fail Safe, which was made almost at the same time. Kubrick’s film interprets the same story as a very bleak comedy. I love the three roles played by Peter Sellers, which are completely different from each other.”
Dr. Strangelove is a satire of the Cold War-era concerns surrounding the potential for nuclear warfare between the Soviet Union and the United States. After a deranged US Air Force general orders a nuclear strike on the Soviets, several other high-ranking members of the government are tasked with trying to prevent its occurrence.
Ishiguro went on to note another actor in the film who impressed him. “The film also contains a few other remarkable performances, including Sterling Hayden as a general going haywire,” he said. “Hayden always looks like a heavy object has just hit him on the head, and here he pulls that off to magnificent effect.”
The writer concluded his thoughts on Kubrick’s beloved comedy work, stating: “It’s a stroke of genius – the moment you realise the human race is going to be wiped out, you’re watching a cowboy whooping and riding an atomic bomb. What a way to announce the end of humanity!”
Check out the trailer for Dr. Strangelove below.
