Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket is divided into two equally intense, but very different parts. The first, which takes place during Marine Corp training at Parris Island, is orderly, clean and neatly symmetrical, but totally chaotic under the constant verbal barrage of the ever quotable Drill Sergeant Harman, played with palpable fire by Gunnery Sergeant R. Lee Ermey. Ermey was initially hired to act only as a technical advisor to Kubrick (who felt Ermey wasn't quite harsh enough), but by making an audition tape of a 15 minute non-repetitive stream of insults while having tennis balls and oranges thrown at him, he was able not only to convince the director that could he play the part, but that he could write his own dialogue – something the controlling Kubrick never allowed with his actors before or since. The result is a searing and unsettling performance.
The Marine's brainwashing training, which is in no uncertain terms intended to create killers (“What do we do for a living, ladies!”?”KILL! KILL! KILL!”; “What makes the grass grow?” “BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD!”), is shown through relentless repetition in beautiful long shots courtesy of cinematographer Douglas Milsome, but it's excruciating to watch the system's effect on the weak and dim witted 'Gomer Pyle', played brilliantly by Vincent D'Onofrio. A man clearly not cut out for the Marines, he becomes a pariah; then something worse under the extreme pressures. He almost finds a friend in PVT 'Joker', the movie's central character (played by Matthew Modine – who we had forgotten used to be a star), but not quite.
The first act ends with a burst of intensity and violence. Without a chance to catch our breath, the very visually different second half begins in Vietnam where we see the results of unleashing trained killers on a country. Joker is now working for a military newspaper and he eventually makes his way to the front lines. The film concludes with a violent and shocking denouement.
A number of films about the Vietnam war experience were released around the same time: Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Hamburger Hill (1987), Casualties of War (1989), Good Morning Vietnam (1987) and, about a decade before, Apocalypse Now (1979) and The Deer Hunter (1978). They all say the same thing because, ultimately, what else is there to say except that war is hell and Vietnam was the lowest depths of it? And while Kubrick's not quite as up front an Anti-war director as say Oliver Stone, here his intention to give an accurate portrayal of the war as it was results in perhaps the most stunning and disturbing work in the canon: there's no story telling conventions here, no melodrama, no story archs, no symbols; the characters come and go and even the protagonist seems at times deliberately, perhaps necessarily, detached by what is happening. It's a small movie, and not surprisingly it was based on one man's experience in the war, noted bibliophile Gus Hasford's now out of print semi autobiographical novel, The Short-Timers. Interpreted by Kubrick and Michael Herr (the author of Dispatches), it's a coldly unemotional cinematic impression of madness.
When I started putting together this list of things I've been meaning to do, Full Metal Jacket was the first thing I thought of. As a big Kubrick fan, it's ridiculous that I've never seen this movie before, but it was made extra difficult to view due to the fact that all my friends have seen it and were extremely reluctant to watch it again; unlike infinitely re watch-able fare like The Shining (which I always stop on whenever I pass it on the TV – no matter how much has already un-spooled) the intensity of this film is not something people are readily excited to revisit.
But what do you think?