Full Metal Jacket is said to be one of the greatest war movies of all time. It is shot in two half's. The first half depicts Vietnam marines in boot camp. It is a very powerful hour, going from the first day that they get there to the recruits graduation and their last day on "the island." The second half is in Vietnam, following around one of the recruits nicknamed Joker. It goes up until a final battle for Joker and his platoon.
Kubrick uses a cold sense of humor to depict a war that he feels is unnecessary. The first half where the recruits are in boot camp, I feel, is the most powerful part of the movie. The main characters in that part are Joker, Pyles, and the drill Sargent. Pyles is a very bad marine and is never doing anything right. The boot camp series progressively gets more and more out of control. You can see private Pyles start to get pushed to the edge and then right over it. The whole boot camp part ends with private Joker finding private Pyles in the bathroom loading his gun. "Leonard .. . if Hartman comes in here and catches us, we'll both be in a world of shit"- Joker. "I am .. . in a world . . . of shit!"- Pyles. This is the part of the movie where Pyles finally loses it, shooting the drill Sargent and then himself. This scene is perfect because it shows the way that the war dehumanizes people and changes them. The look in private Pyles eyes is the look of a crazy person, no where near the look of the happy recruit he came in as. The second part is a mishmash of the same type of thing, showing crazy gunman who kill women and children because the war has made them mad. But the ending shows the same murderous look in Joker's eyes as he executes a women sniper that they found in a building. Kubrick does a great job showing the way war can push people to do things that they would never before dream of.
Kubrick uses many techniques to get the point across in FMJ. He uses many reverse tracking shots, pulling the camera away from people as they walk toward it. Many of the boot camp part is shot like this. He also uses low angles to signify importance. This is especially clear when soldiers are saying their last words to some of their fallen comrades. The most effective thing that Kubrick uses is the way that the camera seems to get more and more out of control as the boot camp part goes on. The camera angles and cuts all seem to get faster and more crazy as the part goes on, showing the effect that the camp has on the privates, especially private Pyles.
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2 comments:
John, i would tend to agree with you about the dehumanizing aspect of this. Granted i feel its good to have the wusses like Gomer out of the army before the actually combat, which i think kubrick shows in the latter half, where the team has to work together to overcome the snipers. It wouldn't've been possible if there was a weirdo who cried alot. I didn't really notice the huge amount of tracking shots, but i feel that is a very kubrick thing to do, good catch!
John, I agree with you as you said that Kubrick used the death of the sargent to almost make fun of war. I think this and Paths Of Glory show us that Kubrick was quite against war and wanted to show the viewer about all the bad things that can come from war.
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