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This movie made me think of Oliver’s Stone’s Platoon, a film that presented the Vietnam War as America’s wild west shoot out between deluded righteousness and human atrocity. Then, came John Irving’s Hamburger Hill where Viet Nam was nothing but a killing ground all of the American small town virtues transported straight into the depths of hell itself. Now here comes Kubrick and his definitive statement, who, in two extremely different films, his brilliant Paths Of Glory (1958) and Dr Strangelove (1964) boldly animated the [his] argument that war is pretty much fucking stupid.
Seeing this movie for the first time last night, I might not have expected Full Metal Jacket to present me a novel argument against war, but for fuck’s sake, I was looking to Stanley Kubrick, one of film’s greatest directors, to give me that argument a fresh set of images, a fresh story to grip the fucking imagination and fuel my moral nerves. What a major disappointment. Just like every other ‘Nam movie that was the hype of the 80’s, Full Metal Jacket portrays the war as an American tragedy, a farce of self-deception which irredeemably tainted the American survivors with a degree of brutalized guilt. 58.000 US dead (estimated) and nearly two million Vietnamese tells me that the war was less then an occasion of American hand-wringing than an absolute disaster for Vietnam.
I was surprised, however, that the disproportionally large numbers of blacks in the US Army were more likely to be represented by a token snatch of Motown on the soundtrack than by any substantial role – and omission of which the “intellectual” Full Metal Jacket is more guilty, oddly enough, than “populist” Platoon ever could hope to be. Kubrick’s ‘Nam then, is a war where white men fuck up royal against semi-invisible slope-eyed hordes armed only with an AK-47, a handful of rice and one fuck of an fanatical death wish (can you say Fallujah?) So is this Kubrick’s point? That how could the world’s richest, most technologically advanced super power have lost? Probably because its level of self-belief was either too hare-brained (“Inside every gook there’s a good American trying to get out!” Barks a typical brass-hat officer) or by instilling a training program which crassly ill-prepared recruits (draftees) for what terror war is really like.
Okay, so this movie does excel in the first-half in which Kubrick gives us a grainy documentary-style account of the US Marine training from the first haircut to the final production of a honed, unquestioning killing machine in green fatigues – or at least that’s Kubrick’s ideal. As the film is being conducted by the manic Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (what an outstanding performance from genuine Viet Vet Ralph Lee Emery) this training fails the marine in the filed of combat as surely as it flips out a hapless recruit, Private Pyle, in a grossly over-the-top scene straight out of Kubrick’s horror flick The Shining. Yes, for Kubrick, whose only contact with much of the outside world during the latter part of his career of being bound to his Hertfordshire estate, can only tell us that war is weird.
The second-half of this film, set in 1968’s Battle Of Hue, then switches nerviness from an effective pseudo-TV newscast with scenes of stylized spookiness which does nothing more then merely announce that Kubrick can’t settle on a persuasively consistent tone for his audience. Yes, Kubrick’s Viet Nam is a tense, wasteful, and horrible one but I’m not so fooled with easy scripted heroes to sugar the bitter pill. Ultimately, Full Metal Jacket told me nothing new – nor does it tell me nothing old with the inventiveness, intelligence and conviction I had a right to expect.
Seeing this movie for the first time last night, I might not have expected Full Metal Jacket to present me a novel argument against war, but for fuck’s sake, I was looking to Stanley Kubrick, one of film’s greatest directors, to give me that argument a fresh set of images, a fresh story to grip the fucking imagination and fuel my moral nerves. What a major disappointment. Just like every other ‘Nam movie that was the hype of the 80’s, Full Metal Jacket portrays the war as an American tragedy, a farce of self-deception which irredeemably tainted the American survivors with a degree of brutalized guilt. 58.000 US dead (estimated) and nearly two million Vietnamese tells me that the war was less then an occasion of American hand-wringing than an absolute disaster for Vietnam.
I was surprised, however, that the disproportionally large numbers of blacks in the US Army were more likely to be represented by a token snatch of Motown on the soundtrack than by any substantial role – and omission of which the “intellectual” Full Metal Jacket is more guilty, oddly enough, than “populist” Platoon ever could hope to be. Kubrick’s ‘Nam then, is a war where white men fuck up royal against semi-invisible slope-eyed hordes armed only with an AK-47, a handful of rice and one fuck of an fanatical death wish (can you say Fallujah?) So is this Kubrick’s point? That how could the world’s richest, most technologically advanced super power have lost? Probably because its level of self-belief was either too hare-brained (“Inside every gook there’s a good American trying to get out!” Barks a typical brass-hat officer) or by instilling a training program which crassly ill-prepared recruits (draftees) for what terror war is really like.
Okay, so this movie does excel in the first-half in which Kubrick gives us a grainy documentary-style account of the US Marine training from the first haircut to the final production of a honed, unquestioning killing machine in green fatigues – or at least that’s Kubrick’s ideal. As the film is being conducted by the manic Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (what an outstanding performance from genuine Viet Vet Ralph Lee Emery) this training fails the marine in the filed of combat as surely as it flips out a hapless recruit, Private Pyle, in a grossly over-the-top scene straight out of Kubrick’s horror flick The Shining. Yes, for Kubrick, whose only contact with much of the outside world during the latter part of his career of being bound to his Hertfordshire estate, can only tell us that war is weird.
The second-half of this film, set in 1968’s Battle Of Hue, then switches nerviness from an effective pseudo-TV newscast with scenes of stylized spookiness which does nothing more then merely announce that Kubrick can’t settle on a persuasively consistent tone for his audience. Yes, Kubrick’s Viet Nam is a tense, wasteful, and horrible one but I’m not so fooled with easy scripted heroes to sugar the bitter pill. Ultimately, Full Metal Jacket told me nothing new – nor does it tell me nothing old with the inventiveness, intelligence and conviction I had a right to expect.
And I do think there were some racist overtones whether Kubrick purposefully put that there for a subtle dramatic effect only confused me more as I watched it. Like I said, I'll go back and re-watch it again and see if I have a different angle on the film.
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