“Full Metal Jacket” is a war drama that saw the light of day twelve years after the events of the armed conflict in Vietnam and eight years after Francis Ford Coppola’s equally notable “Apocalypse Now”. Kubrick’s work tells the story of ordinary soldiers forced to fight and kill for the ideals of their country. Soldiers who go to war for self-affirmation, but find in it only silent horror and death.
This movie is about people who find their place on the battlefield in the face of cold-blooded killers. It is also about people who do not find their place, but become only tragic memories of wartime. Kubrick asks about the human right to violence and the imposed dehumanization of each other. Is man born to kill? Does he have the right to violence? And what does this right really give him?
The film can be divided into two equal parts.
The first tells about the training of new recruits of the U.S. Marine Corps in a training camp on Parris Island in South Carolina. Literally from the opening credits young guys, who have just entered the service, are subjected to very severe psychological pressure, grueling training and marching throws. All their life in the “training school” is under the command of a harsh and no one counts instructor – Sergeant Hartman (played by Lee Ermey). His main task is to create real killers, ready at the right moment without hesitation to perform the intended.
The main characters in this part are privates Leonard Lawrence nicknamed “Homer Pyle” (named after a dumb car mechanic from an American TV show and played by Vincent D’Onofrio) and James T. Davis nicknamed “The Joker” (Matthew Modine). Much of the conflict of the first half centers on the relationship between Sgt. Hartman and the bumbling “Homer Pile”.
In the story, “Heap” finds himself an innocent victim of the brutality of war before he even gets to that very war. Through his relationship with Sergeant Hartman, Kubrick demonstrates the moral decay of naive human nature in the face of pressure from not even the enemy, but already fought a harsh commander, pursuing the goal of creating from the “green” recruits a real tool of murder. In the end, he succeeds even better than planned.
In the novel on which the movie is based, dying Sergeant Hartman says that he is proud of what the private eventually became. He became a real “cog” in the war.
It should be noted that the role of Sergeant Hartman was performed by a real retired military man – a participant in the conflict in Vietnam – Lee Ermey. That is why he looks so organically in the picture, as no one else in a similar role. He does not play, he really behaves as he did during his service in the army.
In the movie, Ermey is in the rank of sergeant commander, while in real life, the military officer retired at a lower rank. However, after his stunning portrayal of such a rugged character, oddly enough, the U.S. Marine Corps began receiving more applications from recruits.
In gratitude, the United States Armed Forces promoted Ermey to the rank of Command Sergeant Major, as in the movie, making him the first retired military officer in U.S. history to be promoted. Thanks to the movie, Ermey went from Staff Sergeant Lee to Command Sergeant.
However, by doing so, Kubrick fully illustrates the process of transformation of ordinary guys, literally into “Angels of Death”. After all, only after going through all the horrors and hardships of the “training school” soldiers can maximally accept the hell of war, even if it is not a full-fledged guarantee.
In fact, the first half of the picture morally prepares the viewer for the second half. Being, to a greater extent, built on dialogues, dictated by the inherent condition of revealing the characters through their verbal relationships, it gradually moves to a more familiar language – the language of action.
The second part plunges the viewer directly into the fighting in Vietnam. The laurels of the main protagonist of the picture are fully transferred to the ordinary “Joker”, at the same time, making him a kind of linking bridge between the parts of the picture.
“Joker” works as a war correspondent whose job it is to write glowing articles praising the victories of the U.S. Army over the course of the Vietnam campaign. The private constantly reflects on what it’s like to get to the front lines and kill people. He finds himself fully immersed in the war, but more as an observer, which, of course, gives him an undeniable advantage in assessing the hell going on around him.
The real name of Private “Joker” – James Thomas Davis. Like the title of the tape, it was not chosen by chance. A real serviceman with the name James Thomas Davis is the first officially registered victim of the Vietnam War. True, some other sources claim that he may have been just one of the first.
Knowing Kubrick’s perfectionism and meticulousness in his work, in this way the director could have indicated the doom of all American soldiers in the face of Vietnam. No matter how well-meaning they came to the war, they would leave it only dead, if not physically, then morally.
The most telling scene in the context of the real horrors of war is when “The Joker” watches one of the Marines methodically shoot civilians with a machine gun while flying over them in a helicopter.
In the course of the story, it is through the prism of the still detached and cynical, but appealing to common sense view of Private James T. Davis that the director vividly demonstrates the essence of war, revealing it from the inside out. With the image of this character Kubrick epitomizes the dualism of human nature.
Initially, Kubrick planned to “kill” Private “Joker” at the end of the movie, adding a scene with a march of soldiers on the background of his grave. However, later the director thought that it would be much more tragic for the character to stay alive in the midst of death without family, friends with a broken spirit and destroyed principles.
In the very first version of the script, the director wanted to start the picture with a funeral scene of a private, but quickly abandoned it.
In general, Kubrick is quite dismissive of the fact of the existence of war as a mechanism for conflict resolution or a way of self-assertion before the weakness of the enemy. He does not make someone right about everything, and someone fundamentally ignorant. He doesn’t try to glorify someone’s greatness through the subject of violence against someone.
Kubrick makes everyone equal and everyone unconditionally guilty. But at the same time, he deplores the broken fates of the people caught in the middle of these perpetually unfortunate and utterly unnecessary events.
Stanley Kubrick despises not so much the people themselves, who are often hostage to circumstances, but those circumstances and the actions that lead to them. Kubrick’s skill as a director is especially to be commended in his ability to present the most urgent subtexts through naive and, to some extent, even childish scenes.
It’s about the ending. In it, the surviving U.S. Army soldiers march through the burning ruins of the city, chorus singing a song from “Mickey Mouse Club”. The director shows real men, who deep down remained little boys, but turned into just another historical example to define the lost generation.
With this, at first glance not quite logical moment, Kubrick also emphasizes that absolutely all soldiers have finally turned into duped shell-shocked bullets, humming a children’s song surrounded by a real hell. Now the war for them is no more serious than a children’s holiday.
On the technical side, the movie is flawlessly shot. Although filming took place entirely in the suburbs of London (where Kubrick loved to shoot), all the battles and scenery are recreated as realistically as possible. It creates a solid feeling of being present and actively involved in the events of the Vietnam War.
“Full Metal Jacket” is a unique movie in the genre and a classic of world cinema. It is one of the most accurate anti-war statements, urging the viewer to reflect on the horror that war brings. To think about what ordinary innocent guys can turn into under the influence of this horror.
