I Just Watched Full Metal Jacket and Can't Get This Image Out of My Head
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*WARNING* MOVIE SPOILERS
by tieman64 (Sun Jul 23 2006 19:21:23)
UPDATED Mon Jun 11 2007 16:02:22
Okay, I’m going to talk about Full Metal Jacket because people keep bugging me and sending me Private Messages and others keep criticizing the second act of the film. But before I run through the film, I’m going to make two points:
1. Full Metal Jacket isn’t only an anti war-film. It goes one up. It’s an anti war-film film. It’s deliberately self reflexive. From Joker's opening line (Is that you John Wayne, is this me?) onwards, Kubrick destabilizes those familiar war movie myths and portrays the Vietnam War by way of a narrative that, like the war itself, frustrates expectations and refuses to progress.
2. The film is about killing off everything that opposes masculinity (ie- anything deemed to be feminine or infantile) until the perfect soldier is achieved. It’s not concerned about the Vietnam war, it’s concerned about discovering what needs to be conquered in order to perfect a killing machine. Most people read the end of the film to be a “mercy killing”. The common view is that Joker has killed this female sniper out of compassion. Yet why does this lead to him acquiring a “war face?”. Why does it lead to him being absorbed into the hellish “Mickey Mouse Club”, and more importantly, why has Joker just narrated the entire film to us as an almost brainwashed monotone robot?
______
Full Metal Jacket is the only war film where the soldiers are messed up before they reach the warzone. Kubrick asks what needs to be destroyed and sacrificed in order to win a war.
The film begins with young soldiers getting their heads shaven. From this very first scene, their individuality and identities are being stripped. Their feminine components are swept away. We’re then subjected to 40 minutes of abuse as Sgt Hartman continually calls into question their sexuality. He calls them ladies, queers, fag sailors etc. . . .a single-minded process of masculine purification. Every trace of femininity is eradicated. “Female” has been replaced by “weapon". The whole thing escalates into a pseudo religion where the recruits pray to their rifles, recite chants and make ritual sacrifices so that “the Virgin Mary would be proud to take a dump”.
The film suggests that to become “born again hard” the male needs to defeat two things:
1. The infantile “self” (Pyle)
2. The feminine “other” (woman/sniper).
Firstly, for the “self” to be won, all ambiguity must be shut down. You must become a one dimensional identity, completely rejecting the feminine and the infantile. Throughout this forty minute period the marines are portrayed as infants and (school) children. They learn to tie their shoes, learn to make their beds, learn to walk, run, climb etc.
But with his baby-fat and his naive innocense, Pyle is different. Kubrick portrays him to be younger than the rest. He’s a wide eyed baby, twice shown sucking on his thumb, often sitting and staring like a child and in one scene, even waddling with his pants down. The only thing holding this unit down and preventing them from progressing is their attachment to their childish nature, represented by Pyle.
Angered by this inability to grow, the marines pin Pyle against his bed, and in a scene that mirrors the ape's hesitant first touch of the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey, proceed to beat Pyle with socks and soap. They want to wash him away.
As a result, Pyle literally malfunctions in the "HEAD" (bathroom), eventually killing Sgt Hartman before commiting suicide himself. With this simultaneous loss of both Hartman (father) and Pyle (child) the Marine unit is now free to evolve further.
(NOTE- the layout of the "head" isn't accurate at all. Like a perverse joke, the toilets are arranged opposite one another, mirroring the bed layout in the barracks, spaced almost like marines standing at attention.)
During the Vietnam period of the film, the marines progress into adolescence. They’re erratic, confused, inexperienced. Here, Kubrick doesn’t give us real characters. He gives us abstractions. Self aware actors trapped in preconstructed roles. Look at their macho posturing, their stupid notions of manhood (I want to get out into the s**t!), they can’t talk to one another without puffing out their chests, putting on stale John Wayne accents and spitting out some cliched characteristic of macho adolescence.
And like adolescents, they’re obsessed with sex. During this period Kubrick awakens their sexuality. It’s here that the paradoxical duality of female identities are revealed: the female prostitute and female soldier- the only collapsed down and one dimensional versions of femininity that the masculinized soldier can relate to. Kubrick draws parallels between the hookers and the soldiers. They are both subjugated. Women- prostitutes in the sex trade. Soldiers- prostitutes in the war-trade. Both groups dehumanised by the collapse of their organic identities.
Note- The second act is AWARE that it is a movie. The actors are AWARE that they are acting. They are AWARE that all their battles are unreal. They shoot with guns devoid of bullet cartridges and "play fall down" whenever they're supposed to die. It's only in the third act, when the whore takes "Animal Mother" back into the bombed out cinema that the "reality" begins again. The irony is that the "real Vietnam" is shot in an abstract tone completely different to the "real" tone in the second act. Hence the point is what we perceive to be the reality of Vietnam is nothing more than second hand information passed on by films, actors and the media. During interviews at the time Kubrick kept equating the way modern war is fought to how films are made- with spreadsheets, profit margins and cost figures etc. The point is, on one level the film sees war as a metaphor for film-making. Something designed and planned and then set into motion. By having the second act be self-aware, Kubrick is providing a critique.
During the THIRD ACT, when the marines finally confront the female sniper, we’re led to believe that this is the final step in them achieving purity. The final step in becoming the perfect masculine killing machine. The child in them has been destroyed in the first act (as was their father)and now the feminine in them will be destroyed. But Kubrick exposes this duality as a myth. In war, Joker's "Jungian thing" is irrelevant. Why?
Because the female sniper is as much a soldier (man) as Joker is. She’s been through the same conditioning. What Joker intended as a compassionate mercy killing to ease her pain, is suddenly mirrored onto Pyle’s suicide in the first third of the film. Hence: SOLDIER KILLING SELF.
It's another suicide.
Joker’s killing isn't only him “rejecting the feminine”, it’s a suicidal act identical to Pyles. The result is him being transformed into yet another war zombie with a “war face and thousand yard stare”.
Unlike the other Marines, Joker had no base instinct for revenge. He's a journalist, not a killer. When he initially tries to kill the sniper (a 15 year old girl- literally INFANTILE AND FEMININE), he finds himself IMPOTENT. His big gun jams and he has to be rescued by RAFTERMAN- the only other new guy in the group.
Note- when Rafterman downs the sniper, there's a long panning shot that tracks him across the room as he behaves and speaks in an exagerated manner. In Kubrick's script there's even a line saying "Rafterman is now a super-grunt". Essentially, in this scene, both NEW GUYS in the unit have been transformed. With the transformation of Rafterman and Joker, the group is complete. The journalists have been converted.
So dispite being intelligent and aware of the dual nature of man, Joker was powerless to find an alternative answer. And this is the true duality represented by the film. Joker went through training beliving that his intelligence and aloof irony, guarded him from conditioning. He was better than the rest. He was aware that it was all "just business". He went through the second act of the film pretending to be an actor, simply because that's how the others were trained to ACT in war. Pretend to be John Wayne. Pretend to be conditioned. Joker is aware that the whole Vietnam scenario is false. He hid behind his intelligence and cynisicm. But now, here he is, presented with a choice between compassion or violence and finds, suddenly, that they're one and the same.
And that, especially in our current political climate, is the irony of all wars. We invade Iraq and Afganistan under the guise of compassion. We kill (violence) in the name of peace. We hang Saddam and pretend to be civilized. We shave them bald, robbing our warriors of freedom so that we may live in freedom instead. This is the truth of war.
The final shot in the film subtly highlights the whole cycle. After killing the sniper, Kubrick gives us a WIDE SHOT of silhouetted soldiers marching across the flaming landscape from LEFT TO RIGHT across the screen. Then, in the next shot, he deliberately breaks the 180 degree rule. The final image shows Joker and the other soldiers marching from RIGHT TO LEFT. Because the soundtrack is continuous the unusual cut goes un-noticed. But the implications are obvious. Unlike traditional war films, FMJ has refused to honour our journey by arriving at any prescribed destination. Instead we continue to hump it back and forth, right to left, re-covering the same ground and making the same mistakes.
The message of the film dove-tails nicely with The Shining's deeper message. Left to right. Back and forth. Same mistakes. Man doesn't progress, only his technology does. I think Eyes Wide Shut ultimately offers Kubrick solution to the problem, but with Full Metal Jacket he's content to simply put on his Mickey Mouse costume and laugh at the absurdity and stupidty of the situation.
by tieman64 (Sun Jul 23 2006 19:21:23)
UPDATED Mon Jun 11 2007 16:02:22
Okay, I’m going to talk about Full Metal Jacket because people keep bugging me and sending me Private Messages and others keep criticizing the second act of the film. But before I run through the film, I’m going to make two points:
1. Full Metal Jacket isn’t only an anti war-film. It goes one up. It’s an anti war-film film. It’s deliberately self reflexive. From Joker's opening line (Is that you John Wayne, is this me?) onwards, Kubrick destabilizes those familiar war movie myths and portrays the Vietnam War by way of a narrative that, like the war itself, frustrates expectations and refuses to progress.
2. The film is about killing off everything that opposes masculinity (ie- anything deemed to be feminine or infantile) until the perfect soldier is achieved. It’s not concerned about the Vietnam war, it’s concerned about discovering what needs to be conquered in order to perfect a killing machine. Most people read the end of the film to be a “mercy killing”. The common view is that Joker has killed this female sniper out of compassion. Yet why does this lead to him acquiring a “war face?”. Why does it lead to him being absorbed into the hellish “Mickey Mouse Club”, and more importantly, why has Joker just narrated the entire film to us as an almost brainwashed monotone robot?
______
Full Metal Jacket is the only war film where the soldiers are messed up before they reach the warzone. Kubrick asks what needs to be destroyed and sacrificed in order to win a war.
The film begins with young soldiers getting their heads shaven. From this very first scene, their individuality and identities are being stripped. Their feminine components are swept away. We’re then subjected to 40 minutes of abuse as Sgt Hartman continually calls into question their sexuality. He calls them ladies, queers, fag sailors etc. . . .a single-minded process of masculine purification. Every trace of femininity is eradicated. “Female” has been replaced by “weapon". The whole thing escalates into a pseudo religion where the recruits pray to their rifles, recite chants and make ritual sacrifices so that “the Virgin Mary would be proud to take a dump”.
The film suggests that to become “born again hard” the male needs to defeat two things:
1. The infantile “self” (Pyle)
2. The feminine “other” (woman/sniper).
Firstly, for the “self” to be won, all ambiguity must be shut down. You must become a one dimensional identity, completely rejecting the feminine and the infantile. Throughout this forty minute period the marines are portrayed as infants and (school) children. They learn to tie their shoes, learn to make their beds, learn to walk, run, climb etc.
But with his baby-fat and his naive innocense, Pyle is different. Kubrick portrays him to be younger than the rest. He’s a wide eyed baby, twice shown sucking on his thumb, often sitting and staring like a child and in one scene, even waddling with his pants down. The only thing holding this unit down and preventing them from progressing is their attachment to their childish nature, represented by Pyle.
Angered by this inability to grow, the marines pin Pyle against his bed, and in a scene that mirrors the ape's hesitant first touch of the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey, proceed to beat Pyle with socks and soap. They want to wash him away.
As a result, Pyle literally malfunctions in the "HEAD" (bathroom), eventually killing Sgt Hartman before commiting suicide himself. With this simultaneous loss of both Hartman (father) and Pyle (child) the Marine unit is now free to evolve further.
(NOTE- the layout of the "head" isn't accurate at all. Like a perverse joke, the toilets are arranged opposite one another, mirroring the bed layout in the barracks, spaced almost like marines standing at attention.)
During the Vietnam period of the film, the marines progress into adolescence. They’re erratic, confused, inexperienced. Here, Kubrick doesn’t give us real characters. He gives us abstractions. Self aware actors trapped in preconstructed roles. Look at their macho posturing, their stupid notions of manhood (I want to get out into the s**t!), they can’t talk to one another without puffing out their chests, putting on stale John Wayne accents and spitting out some cliched characteristic of macho adolescence.
And like adolescents, they’re obsessed with sex. During this period Kubrick awakens their sexuality. It’s here that the paradoxical duality of female identities are revealed: the female prostitute and female soldier- the only collapsed down and one dimensional versions of femininity that the masculinized soldier can relate to. Kubrick draws parallels between the hookers and the soldiers. They are both subjugated. Women- prostitutes in the sex trade. Soldiers- prostitutes in the war-trade. Both groups dehumanised by the collapse of their organic identities.
Note- The second act is AWARE that it is a movie. The actors are AWARE that they are acting. They are AWARE that all their battles are unreal. They shoot with guns devoid of bullet cartridges and "play fall down" whenever they're supposed to die. It's only in the third act, when the whore takes "Animal Mother" back into the bombed out cinema that the "reality" begins again. The irony is that the "real Vietnam" is shot in an abstract tone completely different to the "real" tone in the second act. Hence the point is what we perceive to be the reality of Vietnam is nothing more than second hand information passed on by films, actors and the media. During interviews at the time Kubrick kept equating the way modern war is fought to how films are made- with spreadsheets, profit margins and cost figures etc. The point is, on one level the film sees war as a metaphor for film-making. Something designed and planned and then set into motion. By having the second act be self-aware, Kubrick is providing a critique.
During the THIRD ACT, when the marines finally confront the female sniper, we’re led to believe that this is the final step in them achieving purity. The final step in becoming the perfect masculine killing machine. The child in them has been destroyed in the first act (as was their father)and now the feminine in them will be destroyed. But Kubrick exposes this duality as a myth. In war, Joker's "Jungian thing" is irrelevant. Why?
Because the female sniper is as much a soldier (man) as Joker is. She’s been through the same conditioning. What Joker intended as a compassionate mercy killing to ease her pain, is suddenly mirrored onto Pyle’s suicide in the first third of the film. Hence: SOLDIER KILLING SELF.
It's another suicide.
Joker’s killing isn't only him “rejecting the feminine”, it’s a suicidal act identical to Pyles. The result is him being transformed into yet another war zombie with a “war face and thousand yard stare”.
Unlike the other Marines, Joker had no base instinct for revenge. He's a journalist, not a killer. When he initially tries to kill the sniper (a 15 year old girl- literally INFANTILE AND FEMININE), he finds himself IMPOTENT. His big gun jams and he has to be rescued by RAFTERMAN- the only other new guy in the group.
Note- when Rafterman downs the sniper, there's a long panning shot that tracks him across the room as he behaves and speaks in an exagerated manner. In Kubrick's script there's even a line saying "Rafterman is now a super-grunt". Essentially, in this scene, both NEW GUYS in the unit have been transformed. With the transformation of Rafterman and Joker, the group is complete. The journalists have been converted.
So dispite being intelligent and aware of the dual nature of man, Joker was powerless to find an alternative answer. And this is the true duality represented by the film. Joker went through training beliving that his intelligence and aloof irony, guarded him from conditioning. He was better than the rest. He was aware that it was all "just business". He went through the second act of the film pretending to be an actor, simply because that's how the others were trained to ACT in war. Pretend to be John Wayne. Pretend to be conditioned. Joker is aware that the whole Vietnam scenario is false. He hid behind his intelligence and cynisicm. But now, here he is, presented with a choice between compassion or violence and finds, suddenly, that they're one and the same.
And that, especially in our current political climate, is the irony of all wars. We invade Iraq and Afganistan under the guise of compassion. We kill (violence) in the name of peace. We hang Saddam and pretend to be civilized. We shave them bald, robbing our warriors of freedom so that we may live in freedom instead. This is the truth of war.
The final shot in the film subtly highlights the whole cycle. After killing the sniper, Kubrick gives us a WIDE SHOT of silhouetted soldiers marching across the flaming landscape from LEFT TO RIGHT across the screen. Then, in the next shot, he deliberately breaks the 180 degree rule. The final image shows Joker and the other soldiers marching from RIGHT TO LEFT. Because the soundtrack is continuous the unusual cut goes un-noticed. But the implications are obvious. Unlike traditional war films, FMJ has refused to honour our journey by arriving at any prescribed destination. Instead we continue to hump it back and forth, right to left, re-covering the same ground and making the same mistakes.
The message of the film dove-tails nicely with The Shining's deeper message. Left to right. Back and forth. Same mistakes. Man doesn't progress, only his technology does. I think Eyes Wide Shut ultimately offers Kubrick solution to the problem, but with Full Metal Jacket he's content to simply put on his Mickey Mouse costume and laugh at the absurdity and stupidty of the situation.
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