Full Metal Jacket
is the only war movie that has ever terrified me. When I was a kid it had
virtually the same effect on me as a horror movie. That makes some sense if you
think about it. What isn’t scary about war? Aren’t war movies that claim to be
anti-war more than a bit disingenuous? Depicting the viscera of bodies blown
apart or the heart pounding excitement of bullets flying turns war into
entertainment. There’s almost no way around it. Once it’s been staged and
committed to film you almost can’t avoid the accusation that you’re glorifying
war.
And yet somehow Stanley Kubrick managed to take the
subject matter of the Vietnam War and turn it into something hellish. Watching
it again now, I see that much of the film is deliberately staged like a series
of nightmares. That’s the quality that stuck in my childhood memories and
filled me with dread while I watched.
The film is divided, cleanly and rather jarringly, into
two distinct parts. The first half is set in Marine basic training at Parris
Island, SC, while the second is set in Vietnam, mostly in the battle of Hue
City. Each section has its own nightmarish elements. There are three scenes
that left the biggest impression on me as a child and which still strike me as
psychologically terrifying. Two of them happen on Parris Island and involve
Private Leonard “Gomer Pyle” Lawrence (Vincent D’Onofrio). Pyle is an
overweight and inept loser, a guy who holds back the rest of the platoon and
even induces their drill sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey) to punish everyone
else for his infractions. One night while he sleeps, the entire platoon
silently climb down from their bunks and line up to beat Pyle mercilessly on
his abdomen with soap bars wrapped in towels. The other is the scene that
closes this section in which a crazed Pyle sits in the latrine with a loaded
weapon. He puts a round into Hartman’s chest before turning the rifle into his
own mouth splattering his brains on the white tile wall behind him.
The circumstances alone are not enough to create a
sensation of fear. Kubrick bathes the scenes in an eerie blue haze. The sound
effects are strangely muffled in the beating scene and echo off the harsh tiles
in the murder-suicide scene. The pristine qualities of the barracks and the
latrine create a dichotomy that is creepy to behold. And the musical score by
Kubrick’s daughter Vivian is haunting in both scenes.
The third scene is at the end of the Vietnam section when
Joker and Rafter Man find the sniper that has been tearing apart their squad
from the inside of a bombed out shell of a building in Hue City. After seeing
three soldiers killed by sniper fire we don’t know what to expect. It could be
the devil himself for all we or they know. The inside of the building where
Joker finds their tormenter is partially engulfed in flames. It is a kind of
hell on earth. Again the music sets the tone, a kind of cacophony of industrial
sounding discordant tones that used to make my heart race. Just before the
Marines make their way in to locate the sniper we bear witness to two squad
members getting picked off in agonizingly torturous slow motion. The sniper
continues to put bullets in them in an attempt to draw more of the squad in to
help them. None of the hits are ‘kill’ shots and so the two men scream in pain
while their comrades sit back and do nothing. Kubrick chooses to shoot this
from distance rather than putting his camera in for a close-up, thus doing his
best to keep it from becoming entertainment.
I think a lot of critics found fault with the film’s lack
of narrative structure. Not only is the film divided into two distinct
sections, neither of which necessarily depends on the other’s existence, but there’s
not really a story here. There’s no meaningful dialogue spoken throughout most of
the Parris Island sequence. It’s not until Joker (Matthew Modine) is assigned to nurse Pyle
through his training that any characters share anything resembling feelings
with one another. Up to that point it’s the crazed Sgt. Hartman (himself kind
of playing a sick demented role for Uncle Sam) shouting at the recruits and
doing everything in his power to break their spirits and dominate them so he
can rebuild them as killers. Although we get a taste of Joker’s sarcasm during
basic training, it’s not until the Vietnam section that we get a real sense of
his cynical personality. It’s here that the Marines, including Joker’s Parris
Island ‘brother’ Cowboy (Arliss Howard) and the cold-hearted Animal Mother (Adam
Baldwin), can be themselves.
Kubrick wrote the screenplay along with Michael Herr and
Gustav Hasford, based on Hasford’s semi-autobiographical novel The Short-Timers. My understanding is
that much of the Parris Island section is similar, but the Vietnam section has
been altered significantly. From what I gather, the novel is also divided into
sections that are even written in distinct styles. So Kubrick may have been
trying to keep to that sense of disconnect present in the original source
material.
What Kubrick seems to be trying for is a continuation of
themes he explored in Paths of Glory
and Dr. Strangelove. He’s combining
black humor with the notion that the state uses its soldiers to conduct its
wars but has little care for how they come out the other side. Sgt. Hartman’s
duty is to turn young men into fighting machines that kill. He is a surrogate
for the U.S. government. Private Joker trudges through Vietnam wearing a peace
button and the phrase “Born to Kill” on his helmet. When questioned by a
superior about this insubordination, Kubrick is none too subtle in providing
Joker with a response: He’s trying to suggest something about the “duality of
man.” In a way, Joker was reborn to kill after Parris Island. The peace button betokens
the mercy killing of the sniper at the end.
I don’t quite know what to make of Full Metal Jacket today. In many ways I still see it with those
eyes of a child from having seen it so often on cable while growing up. It’s
hard to separate those feelings while watching it now. I think it’s still a
remarkably effective piece of filmmaking and one of the best of the myriad
Vietnam War films released up to that time. I know I used to watch Oliver Stone’s
Platoon with excitement. I don’t find
Kubrick’s film exciting. It’s more of a slog. You sit down to watch it knowing
you’re in for an emotional pummeling. I guess that’s more appropriate for the
topic.
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