So ends this famous film by Stanley Kubrick, as Private Joker marches off into a night lit only the flames from burning buildings, fresh from his first kill, and safe in the knowledge that although he is definitely in ‘a world of sh*t’, he’s going to be alright. It is almost an uplifting moment, which does come as something of a surprise for a film, which, while being extremely thought provoking, is almost unrelentingly depressing, bordering on distressing.
Stanley Kubrick was never noted for making ‘easy’ films and this is certainly no exception – the viewer is given a no-holds-barred view of the life cycle of a recruit in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. The first half of the film deals exclusively with recruit training in South Carolina, and opens with repeated views of the classic symbol of a soldier’s life, the ritual head-shaving that all recruits undergo. You see face after face, black, white, whatever: All start to become faintly alike without the individuality of hairstyles, and then these blank faces are transposed to the barrack room.
The recruits are entirely in the command of a drill instructor who is harsh to the point of brutality, employing physical and verbal abuse to ensure that his charges respect the gravity of their situation, and the importance of obedience and training. You see Joker, Cowboy, Snowball and Pyle (for all recruits are given nicknames to emphasise their removal from civilian life) being put through rigorous exercises on the assault course, and it is the fate of Private Pyle that is the most disturbing.
He is a simple farm boy who is forever making mistakes, seeming educationally subnormal and unable to comprehend
basic commands. He is tall, ungainly and overweight, slow on the assault course, clumsy on parade and the root of punishments inflicted on the group. The drill instructor’s rage, initially focused on Pyle, is expanded to affect the rest of the recruits, as he seems incapable of correcting his mistakes. Although Joker, the squad leader, takes Pyle under his wing and tries to help him get his drill right and stay out of trouble, the hapless country boy makes one mistake too many. His fellow recruits administer a painful beating in the dead of night, and from that moment on, something changes in Pyle’s head, and the film veers from being a painful insight into military training to become something of a psychological study into the mental decline of one man, and very painful it is to watch.
Pyle becomes an automaton, almost the perfect soldier, but something is dreadfully amiss. He is heard talking to his rifle, and no longer communicates with the other recruits, preferring to spend him time cleaning his M14 and honing his rifleman’s skills on the target range. His drill is impeccable and he knows the military rulebook inside out, but it is all too clear to Joker that Pyle should be recommended for a Section 8, a discharge on mental health grounds. However, Kubrick chooses to show instead how one man’s plight can be ignored by the military machine, to the point where he can take it no longer. The much-maligned Private Pyle does finally snap, on the very last night of the recruits’ training, and after he has been assigned to serve in the infantry in Vietnam, and this is possible the most disturbing scene in the film, as you see in graphic detail just how one man can be driven to despair, with bloody consequences.
The second half of the film is totally detached from the images of the training camp, and is set in an environment which cinemagoers have become much more familiar with over the years - the jungles and cities of Vietnam and the conflict that raged therein. Joker has been posted to Da Nang (the main Marines base) as a journalist, and spends his time going from battle to battle, and filing reports on the carnage, while the closest he comes to any action is waiting for Ann-Margret to arrive, and having his camera stolen as he haggles with a prostitute outside a cafe. That all changes, however, as he is caught up in the Tet Offensive. The Vietnamese New Year had been declared as a time of truce, but the NVA and Viet Cong broke the cease-fire and punched gaping holes in the US/South Vietnamese lines, making huge inroads into the south of the peninsula.
It is as if the whole episode with Pyle never happened, as he is not mentioned once in the entire second half of the film, but Joker does find his old friend Cowboy, who is fighting in the same sector that Joker is posted to report on, in the ancient city of Hue. Hue, in this case, was actually represented by the old Docklands area of London, before the massive redevelopment that has since taken place there! Strange to think how convincingly part of Britain’s capital city could be made to resemble a war zone, only a relatively short time ago.
The North Vietnamese had taken control of most of the city, and the viewer is put through some of the most harrowing scenes of street-to-street fighting you can imagine. Soldiers are picked off one by one by a lone sniper as they try and fight their way through to a friendly checkpoint, bullets smash into bone and flesh in slow motion, and the victims contorted faces and anguished cries linger long in the memory.
The soldiers have to choose whether to mount an essentially futile action to save their fallen comrades, when the sensible option would be to pull back and regroup, and when they do discover the sniper, it becomes something of a rite of passage for Joker. It is a situation that has been portrayed in many films about the Vietnam War, but rarely has the job been done so effectively – confronted by the realisation that the sniper was only a girl, but one so consumed by religious and political fervour that she has killed 3 soldiers in cold blood, what does Joker do? Does he pull the trigger and finish her off, thus earning the respect of his fellow warriors for making a combat kill and avenging the deaths of his brothers in arms, or does he leave her where she is to die in peace? It is not pleasant to watch, but it makes you think.
That is what this entire film is about, I feel – Kubrick doesn’t make any bold statements about right and wrong, but instead tries to give an accurate representation of life as a recruit and as a soldier. Both lives were lived in conditions that bordered on intolerable, and perhaps the best insight into the soldier’s mind is given by the mock interviews that Joker, Cowboy and co give in the rubble of Hue, as they talk about seeing new cultures, meeting new people, and killing them. Men who would not ordinarily think like that became completely inured to death and destruction, and in the end simply revelled in their daily exposure to these conditions.
In the end, that is what happens to Joker, the one character you encounter who seems to be above being drawn into this all-pervading culture of death, the man who paints ‘Born to Kill’ on his helmet, yet wears a CND pin badge on his tunic. It is a sobering thought – even though he was mentally strong enough to survive the rigours of training, and has proved himself physically capable of surviving in battle, the things he sees and does will surely scar him for life. He says he’s alright, but I’m not so sure.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Production Year: 1970 - War - Director: Brian G. Hutton - Original Language: English - Classification: Parental Guidance - Starring: Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Carroll O'Connor, Donald Sutherland, Don Rickles, Gavin MacLeod
One of a series of revisionist Vietnam cinema released in the late 1980s, Stanley ... more
Kubrick'sFull Metal Jacketis essentially split into two stories linked by a number of characters. The film follows new recruit Joker (Matthew Modine) and his fellow soldi...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
One of a series of revisionist Vietnam cinema released in the late 1980s, Stanley ... more
Kubrick'sFull Metal Jacketis essentially split into two stories linked by a number of characters. The film follows new recruit Joker (Matthew Modine) and his fellow soldi...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 1 to 3 weeks...
A superb ensemble cast falls in for action in Stanley Kubrick's brilliant saga about the ... more
Vietnam War and the dehumanising process that turns people into trained killers. Joker (Matthew Modine) Animal Mother (Adam Baldwin) Gomer (Vincent D'Onofrio) ...
Postage & Packaging: £0.00 Availability: 3-5 working days
A superb ensemble cast falls in for action in Stanley Kubrick's brilliant saga about the ... more
Vietnam War and the dehumanizing process that turns people into trained killers. Joker (Matthew Modine), Animal Mother (Adam Baldwin), Gomer (Vincent D'Onofrio), E...
Advantages: Although a lot of films based around war are all just about the war this shows us the more comically side involved which makes this film that extra bit better Disadvantages: I think the film was not bases enough around what we wanted to see and that was the action of the war. War has never been a good thing but when buying a film about it we expect so see some of it
Advantages: Thought provoking, great one liners, great acting, good story Disadvantages: Too short for both parts. Maybe there should have been 2 separate films?
![Full Metal Jacket [1987] [DVD]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/78525362.jpg "Full Metal Jacket [1987] [DVD]")
Jun 11th, 2001
very helpful by (100%):
