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*Spoiler* Full Metal Jacket - Review written for the PS: Reel vs. Real. - Comment!
Film Analysis – Full Metal Jacket
Full Metal Jacket, released on June 26th 1987, was produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The screenplay is based on the novel The Short-Timers written by the former Marine Gustav Hasford.
The movie portrays the Vietnam War from the perspective of U.S. Marines and is structured in two parts – on the one hand a boot camp on Parris Island, South Carolina and on the other hand Vietnam’s war zones in 1968. Astonishingly the movie was entirely filmed in England assembling a quiet authentic image of the Vietnamese urban countryside.
Throughout the movie the story is narrated by its protagonist J.T. Davis (Matthew Modine), whose epithet is Joker, a member of 3092 platoon starting recruit training on Parris Island. In an outrageous way the movie’s first part is overshadowed by the tyranny of Senior Drill Instructor Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey), who creates an atmosphere of gloom, shaping Full Metal Jacket’s first part from top to bottom. Hartman urgently resembles the reflection of an insensitive, unbearable and cruel superior, who castigates his recruits in a daunting fashion. Excellently the Drill Instructor’s harsh words engender a realistic impression of military life. “You had best un-fuck yourself or I will unscrew your head and shit down your neck!”
In contrast to the dreadful world of military omnipotence, “You are the lowest form of life on earth” , the movie’s observer has to witness the embarrassing decline of Leonard Lawrence (Vincent D'Onofrio), an overweight, damageable recruit, who forfeits his life in desperate attempt to outlive the daily torture. Sadly enough Hartman takes personal offence at Lawrence and drives him irreversibly mad. The climax of horror is reached, when Lawrence is punished by his fellow recruits in a nighttime blanket party, because of steady, collective punishment for the platoon beforehand.
Illusionary Lawrence seems to be reborn as a competent soldier, but Joker, who had been commanded to help Lawrence, quickly recognizes that his alleged comrade suffers under a mental disorder.
Therefore the last night on Parris Island reveals the inner life of Lawrence, when he kills Hartman with his rifle and commits suicide in a final act of hate and agony, which symbolizes one of the movie’s keystones.
The second part of the movie takes place in Vietnam in 1968, showing Joker as a Marine Combat Correspondent on behalf of Stars and Stripes. Interestingly enough Full Metal Jacket does not follow its predecessors by unveiling a cliché-ridden picture of a barbarous war in the jungle. On the contrary Joker’s way, accompanied by his new fellow Rafterman leads to the urban battlefield of the ongoing Tet Offensive. “The Tet Offensive was the turning point in America's involvement in the Vietnam War. It had a profound impact on domestic support for the conflict.” Actually both of them are willing to fight, because they have not been detailed for a war zone, yet. Reaching the front line, the Correspondents are pointed to a mass grave full of civilians murdered by the N.V.A.. Obviously at this juncture the movie reminds the observer of the Second World War and tries to illuminate the moral inconsistency of human nature, when Joker exemplifies the Duality of Man while being confronted with a Marine Colonel (Bruce Boa), who blames him for simultaneously representing the written-slogan Born to Kill and the Peace Symbol on his uniform.
Later on Joker meets his friend Cowboy (Arliss Howard), one of his former boot camp buddies and joins his squad on patrol in the city of Hué. The following days are dominated by a few battles, culminating in a bloodthirsty war against a sniper, who takes the lives of several soldiers including Cowboy. The sniper turns out to be a young Vietnamese girl, finally being badly injured in a thrilling fight by Rafterman. Ultimately Joker is forced to kill the praying girl in an act of mercy, which is permitted by Animal Mother (Adam Baldwin), the new squad leader, after a quarrel about leaving her to the rats.
Hereafter the movie ends with the soldiers marching through the night singing the theme song to the Mickey Mouse Club.
In general Full Metal Jacket is an unsurpassed depiction of the harsh realities of the American military system as well as the tragedy of the Vietnam War. “U.S. soldiers killed in action - 58,159.” Extraordinary in its psychological strain the movie characterizes the rough selection performed in U.S. military training facilities as well as the war’s inhumanity. The ruthlessness is comparable to Darwin’s scientific theory of natural selection.
“As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.”
The question comes up whether it is necessary and morally justifiable to modify a recruit in order to survive on the battlefield. From the military point of view the brutalization of soldiers is indispensable, because the war shows no mercy and the army has to prepare its generally good-natured people for wartime. This procedure is explicitly demonstrated by Drill Instructor Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in the movie. “If you ladies leave my island, if you survive recruit training, you will be a weapon. You will be a minister of death, praying for war. But until that day you are pukes.”
According to the military way of thinking there is no place for physically and psychologically degenerated people. To emphasize this attitude one has to think about Herbert Spencer’s term Survival of The Fittest, which corresponds with the fundamental idea of war. The uttermost asymmetry is constituted by Leonard Lawrence, who is consequently punished by his drill instructor because of his inability to adapt.
Although Full Metal Jacket does not work with sophisticated dialogues, the inner life of Leonard Lawrence becomes obvious. In the first place he is not able to integrate into the group and is regarded as a maverick. Looking at the daily torture, which Lawrence has to bear, it is no matter of chance that he becomes mentally ill. Remarkably his comrades do not support him at all and he is left alone. Despite Joker being ordered to help him in the course of time, the recruits seem to be afraid to help and gradually lose their humanity. With respect to good deeds in hard and tormenting situations, human nature indicates a massive weakness. This presumption becomes outstanding, when Lawrence is punished by his own comrades in revenge. In fact this scene is the most affecting and symbolizes the bloodiness of the whole military system and hints at how the process of group dynamics works.
After being punished by his comrades, Lawrence suffers from a mental shock and his behavior suddenly changes. At this point it would be quiet interesting to make a consideration of what would have happened, if his comrades had not tortured him? To which extent are the recruits responsible for Lawrence’s self-inflicted death? However, by now Lawrence’s capabilities are increasing and he becomes a kind of military prototype, who instead of integrating into the group matches perfectly with the military system. Obviously Lawrence has lost his sensibility and soulfulness. “"I am in a world of shit"
His suicide emphasizes the Army’s cruelty, the selection of its system as well as a deeper look into the real inner life of a broken human being, which has lost its identity and will.
But what has happened to those recruits, who are supposed to fight in Vietnam? The Army wanted them to be killers and they definitely reached their goal. “The deadliest weapon in the world is a marine and his rifle. It is your killer instinct which must be harnessed if you expect to survive in combat. Your rifle is only a tool. It is a hard heart that kills.”
Full Metal Jacket is presenting a well-grounded scenario in which a soldier is mentally broken down due to horrific events, invented by the Army, in order to reconstruct a machine, which obeys every command. Unambiguously the soldier’s subconsciousness is affected by daily torture, efforts and stress and therefore his rationality has almost completely disappeared in a refined transition caused by a subliminal process. As a result the movie alludes to Carl Gustav Jung’s theory Duality of Man and deals with human oppositions in a rather ironic way. In fact Joker and his comrades are captured in a psychological discrepancy, which mostly ends in a post-traumatic stress disorder.
At this point the emotional transformation from an ordinary person to a killer becomes predominant and conveys the movie’s most important question: What makes an ordinary human being kill another human being? The inner emptiness and hopelessness, which had chased Lawrence until he committed suicide?
In actuality the transition is necessary for the modified soldier to be successful on the battlefield, but he is hardly able to be reintegrated into the society. “There are persistent stereotypes about Vietnam veterans as psychologically devastated, bitter, homeless, drug-addicted people who had a hard time readjusting to society, primarily due to the uniquely divisive nature of the Vietnam War.”
In spite of the fact that Full Metal Jacket does not provide any substantial character study, the movie excels in impressive pictures and multifarious representations of feelings.
In conclusion Full Metal Jacket is a masterpiece, which analyzes the inhumanity of war and the society’s moral decline with respect to a synthetic selection being intent on making profit in a sick, modern world.
Last edited by JohnJRambo; 06-28-2007 at 08:50 AM.
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