Strange Times: Mario Falsetto’s Conception of Temporality in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove”
In Mario Falsetto's book, Stanley Kubrick: A Narrative and Stylistic Analysis, the author makes the case that Kubrick established a "direct correspondence between fictional and real time" (37) through a reading that utilizes an “empirical”, proto-Cultural Analytics approach à la Lev Manovich, measuring such things as the histograms of Average Shot Length (ASL) per scene. Along with other, quasi-scientific occlusions into the filmic space, he interestingly and mysteriously states that filmic techniques such as long shots of three or more minutes "(add) to the sense of temporal compression" in Kubrick’s oeuvre (35). It’s not entirely clear how such a conclusion could be inferred from the work of any filmmaker. †
Also, like a weirdly farcical Kubrickian creation, Falsetto perceives in the director’s techniques a temporal/spatial equivocality between the real and filmed worlds (36-7). In contrast, even through the most superficial viewing of this film, one cannot help but believe that the various approaches utilized by Kubrick, such as long shots of “tense” scenes filled with absurd dialogue, do the exact opposite.
Indeed, the need for urgency that is expected in some of Kubrick’s scenes are cunningly undermined by the very length of time taken in each of them with their rambling and silly dialogue, along with the intentional and ironic veracity of taking shooting cues from documentary film.
Also, it is this writer's feeling that, through such techniques as the attention paid to exacting decor in the film’s art direction, along with the high level of overall "realism" (37), all such means are put to extremely ironic use by Kubrick in rendering the decisive moment of crisis whereby panic, sense of agency, and quick delivery of (rational) dialogue should instead be immediately given, but are not.
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The scenes involving General Ripper, and his British subordinate, Mandrake, are one of the primary sites of ironic/farcical display within the film. That is to say, the rambling, insane, cowboy talk of the General, shot in long takes, seemingly creates tension within the plot, but is instead subverted by Mandrake's very existence. This is no more apparent than in the very name given to the General's Executive Officer.
Through a cursory look at definitions found in a few common dictionaries, a mandrake is descriptive of three primary items that are of interest to us here:
1) It was the NATO code-designation for a Stalin-era interceptor used in the north and eastern outlays to protect the former USSR.
2) The word is derived from the name of a 16th century demon of Spanish origin that was conceived for the purpose of consultation by occult sorcerers in a time of need and is immune to fire.
3) The mandrake was a symbol for birth in William Blake's early graphical/poetic work, "The Gates of Paradise: For Children".
In relation to these definitions, Mandrake, the character, becomes a multi-pronged foil to Ripper's lunatic excess (and the very idea of "realistic" tension existing within the plot). A polysemic character, Mandrake is, as the paranoid Ripper at one point imagines, a potential Ruskie; a "demon" of sorts that Ripper has "created" and locked inside his room to help him continue casting his paranoid spell upon the world (though Mandrake does exactly the opposite). And also an ironic symbol of birth in a situation that promises to promote nothing more than total, nuclear megadeath.
Thus, such a Bakhtinian, "dialogical" reading deconstructs the very notion that Ripper and Mandrake are renderings of anything sufficiently "realistic". Instead, they are, in the hands of Kubrick, farcical characters that both prolong the narrative through wild dialogue referencing American cowboy culture and comedic British silliness, when it should instead be racing forward towards some sort of rational outcome. Not least when Mandrake tries to extract the mission stop-code from Ripper (44)--In an inverse "consultation", the demon now tries to get help from the sorcerer!
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The other major scenes produce much of the same kind of black-comedy goofball "Slaughter!” to a theory that wishes to show Kubrick directly correlating fictional time with real time, or some scene being perceived as more "realistic" because of its realistic set design.
The pilot and crew's demeanor in the B-52, while certainly presented with more editorial speed and within tighter spatial quarters than the other scenes (37), also displays a languid, happy-go-lucky approach to dialogue which should not be happening in a nuclear war.
From the pilot Kong’s (Slim Pickens) goofy cowboy hat and darkly slap-stick ride upon the tip of a bomb, to the inordinate amount of time-consuming preparations for launching the weaponry and finding the target, all of these sub-scenes ironically contradict any sense of "real" time. Likewise, the War Room scenes with their hilarious time-sucking dialogue, cavernous space, and cocktail hour amenities (such as the delicious spread of catered food), do the opposite from what one would expect in a time of crisis.
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Though Falsetto rightfully understands that Kubrick utilizes temporal/editorial techniques and space to create narrative momentum, the director’s entire point seems to rocket right over Falsetto’s head, with his thesis applied to Dr. Strangelove coming across as strangely humorous as the lines spoken by any of the film’s bizarre characters. As it stands, Falsetto’s general thesis is a fair warning siren for all who wish to force reductionistic, quasi-empirical interpretive methodologies upon artistic objects.
Notes:
† As an example, Elephant, by Alan Clarke (1989), especially because the film contains a lot of action in its long takes and acts as a foil to the argument one might expect in defense of Falsetto’s claim: that long shots with a lot of action compress time.
In particular, Elephant utilizes long takes fused to tracking shots in order to build up tension towards the individual murders at the end of each scene; it is the extreme production and presentation of space that takes over our perception in order to define the urban geography of Northern Ireland and its Troubles as an entirely violent place (space), and that its violent history (time) ultimately no longer has any meaning or use beyond the fog of hatred as distant psychodramatic impetus.
Bibliography:
Falsetto, Mario. Stanley Kubrick: A Narrative and Stylistic Analysis, Praeger Publishers, 1994.
