Movie Review: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love the Bomb and The Long Walk Home
Two history-elucidating films, which are so different at the first glance, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and The Long Walk Home, shed light on the peculiarities of the epoch that followed the Second World War. The events shown in both of them send us back to the middle of the XX century, when people bred hopeful expectations about their bright future in the brand new United States of America.
This period was marked in the history as the years of progress, which was bigger than ever before, rushing towards the new age with booming economy, booming child births, booming industries and commodities. The US was the fastest country in the economic development and in the military force. Although there were also problems, both inner and outer, that disturbed the society.
The Long Walk Home highlights the major inner problem faced by the American society, which laid in racial discrimination and segregation, which was the reason of many events shaking social stability and economic growth. Montgomery Bus Boycott, pictured in the film, is just one of those events, which shows how strongly people were struggling to gain equality. Their efforts were also successful because of the white population helping them – many white people spoke for racial equality and voluntarily together with the African Americans closely dealing within their community. This is perfectly exampled by the story of Odessa Cotter, an African American female citizen, who worked as a maid of wealthy white woman Miriam Thompson. Despite the big quarrels with her family and friends, she became a key point for help for black workers like her maid.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, on the opposite, highlights the problem, which raised outside the country and laid in the constant armaments race conducted by the Soviet Union and the US, and the hush conditions of the Cold War. Every of them considered another one to be the threat to the world, which should be liquidated in case of being a social danger.
Dr. Strangelove perfectly suits today`s world challenges, as comparing to the 1950-s there are much more powerful countries than before and their development and military powers are unbelievable in numbers. The US and Russia are still considered to be superpowers, although now the world political arena has one more superpower – China, together with those countries, which are considered to be a threat to people`s life and freedom, as North Korea and Islamic State.
Being a common person, nobody of us can influence the situation in the world, even in the smaller extend, so the only thing left is to hope that all the problematic issues in the end will be resolved with the help of those who acts rightly, but not those, who breed violence to dominate. It is better to hope that the great prosperity and economic boom, which took place in the 1950-s will repeat. And, perhaps, We`ll Meet Again with it, without missiles exploding.
