The Infallible Kubrick

I've never even thought about having my own blog, but then again, I'm a sell out. I have nothing interesting to say, nor any ideas that are my own, so my first post is going to be an essay I wrote my freshman year of college on the Stanley Kubrick film (aka movie) Full Metal Jacket....

The world famous film director Stanley Kubrick once said: "I would not think of quarreling with your interpretation nor offering any other, as I have found it always the best policy to allow the film to speak for itself." Not every film is self-explanatory in the sense that it doesn’t leave you with any questions when it concludes, but mostly every Stanley Kubrick film is this way. For the average filmgoer, they prefer their movies to be interpreted and explained for them; Stanley Kubrick believes that should not be so. If you have ever watched some of his films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey or A Clockwork Orange, you will understand that Kubrick lets the film’s pictures rather than words explain what is going on. Film critic Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun-Times, doesn’t appear to be a big fan of some of Kubrick’s best works and he shows it in his review of Full Metal Jacket. Ebert clearly states in his review that Full Metal Jacket “is more like a book of short stories than a novel….This is a completely shapeless film from the man whose work usually imposes a ferociously consistent vision on his material” (Ebert 1). I feel that Roger Ebert is completely missing what Full Metal Jacket is trying to say. The movie is making a bold statement about the military and the way in conducts itself with its training to make young men into emotionless killers.

The first time I watched the movie Full Metal Jacket I wasn’t too impressed. I actually would have agreed with most of what Roger Ebert had to say about the film. I especially would’ve agreed that “It’s one of the best looking war movies made on sets and stages, but that’s not good enough when compared to the awesome reality of Platoon…” (Ebert 1).There is hardly any dialogue for the first half hour of the film. It starts out with a platoon of new army recruits in training at Boot Camp. Their drill instructor, Sergeant Hartman, played by R. Lee Ermey, is one of the most memorable characters that has ever been in a war movie. He basically does 90% of the talking during the first 20 or 30 minutes of the film. To the layperson watching this film, it would be pretty annoying to have barely any dialogue for such an amount of time, but if you put thought into it you’ll realize that Kubrick is trying not to give any of the soldiers a personality. Then we are introduced to Privater “Joker”, who is the comical relief within the platoon, and Private “Pyle”, who seems to be the innocent and weak person in the platoon. These are the only 3 characters that are given any substance throughout the movie.

Roger Ebert’s review almost entirely leaves out Private Joker. He doesn’t find him as a memorable character as the drill instructor or Private Pyle as he implies when he says: “After the departure of his two most memorable characters, the sergeant and the tubby kid, he is left with no charactors (or actors) that we really care much about.” (Ebert 2).I couldn’t disagree more with Roger Ebert on this. Kubrick portrays Private Joker as one of the only humane characters besides Pyle. Joker is the only one out of the Platoon that helps Pyle out in becoming a better soldier, even though he is told to by Sergeant Hartman. Ebert then decides to concentrate more on the connection between sex and war, but he does not try to tell why this connection exists. In one scene the soldiers sleep with their rifles, but before they go to bed they chant: “This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle I am useless.” The fact that these men are being told that without a gun, they are useless just seems absurd, but this is what really happens in military training. These soldiers are even told to give their rifles a name, making more of a bond between them and their killing contraption. I think that because if he did tell of why this connection existed, it would shed a whole new light upon the film that would make you think a lot more deeply of why things are how they are. This connection should be more of a parallel between “Love and War” not “Sex and War”. This would then unmask the main theme and moral argument of the film that the Military trains the average man to become an inhumane killing machine.

Roger Ebert only somewhat mentions the film’s actual theme only once in his analysis and that is “Kubrick seems to want to tell us the story of characters to show how the war affected them, but it has been long since he allowed spontaneous human nature into his films that he no longer knows how.”(Ebert 2). Now it is a well known fact in the movie business that Stanley Kubrick’s movies almost always have to do with the dehumanization of certain characters. It is the exception that is it every character in this movie that goes through the process. The movie starts with a group of “runts” scared and lost in boot camp and the movie ends with the same group of men, with the exception of a few new characters, who are now “born to kill” soldiers with no remorse for their fellow man. Private Joke is deviation from this group: he is wearing a peace symbol on his chest, but has “Born to Kill” written on his helmet. One of the generals in the movie points it out but Joker never explains why it is there. I believe Kubrick put the pin on his chest to show that Joker has peace in his heart, but his head has been tampered with by the United States Military. Now he is a machine that has been re-"Born to Kill" and has one purpose, and that is to kill.Roger Ebert insists on comparing this movie to other war movies, but I believe this movie is beyond other war movies. It is not a movie about the war itself, it is a movie about the dehumanizing of our fellow Americans who enlist into the marines and lose their respect for the life of others.

I have yet to see a Stanley Kubrick film that is not just pleasing for the eyes, but also unsettling for the mind. Every movie he makes is very thought provoking and almost always brings up some moral argument. Full Metal Jacket is probably the greatest example of this, but Roger Ebert would prefer a movie such as Platoon to show that "war is hell". Full Metal Jacket is not necessarily a war movie, but more like a behind-the-scenes of what has to happen for wars to happen. I think it would take a true artist to make a movie that sends a powerful message about war that only has less than an hour of actual war and gun fights than a movie like Platoon where its 2 hours of straight combat and special effects. This is not a violent movie, but more of a movie about violence and how the military numbs its soldiers to violence. When you watch a movie like Platoon you aren’t left with any questions, no thoughts linger in your mind, nothing is left up to you to interpret but this is not how Stanley Kubrick would ever make a film.