PAB BLOG 6. (Seven-six-two millimeter) FULL METAL JACKET

Stanley Kubruck’s Full Metal Jacket loosely follows the military life of a US Marine nicknamed “Joker”. In typical Kubrick fashion, this film was excellent. Full Metal Jacket delivered powerful and beautiful images that represented the human psyche in a time of war.
The first “part” of this film took place at Paris Island where the new wave of hopeful marines becomes trained. The first shots of the film simply watched as a dozen or so young men had their heads shaved in preparation for training. Even in the first shot of this movie, a powerful theme and good amount of foreshadowing are displayed: these young men have already lost a part of themselves, but soon they will lose even more. From that point on, we mostly see the soldiers in nothing but boxers and a tee-shirt while the drill sergeant berates them.
The most important aspect of this part of the film is the drastic change in Private Pyle. Private Pyle was first seen on camera laughing at the drill sergeant’s vulgar tirades. Immediately, the drill sergeant makes Pyle choke himself (possibly a metaphor for what every Vietnam War draftee endured). Private Pyle constantly makes mistakes and soon Private Joker is in charge of cleaning up his act. Eventually, whenever Pyle made a mistake, the entire platoon would be punished. Naturally, all the marines beat Private Pyle with bars of soap in the middle of the night. This event causes Private Pyle to ‘snap’, and become introverted and psychotic. Pyle talks to his gun, starts excelling at all of the things he once could not do, and begins sporting a complexion of pure evil. Before they graduate, Private Pyle has a stand-off with the drill sergeant and Private Joker. Pyle kills the drill sergeant and himself. A scene like this one illustrates what can happen to the human mind when faced with war. Private Pyle had not even made it to the front lines before he was pushed too far and killed himself.
The story follows Private Joker to his position at a military base in Vietnam where he is a journalist. In the film, the man who Joker works for is telling his group of writers ‘what to write’. For instance, he mentions to them that instead of saying “search and destroy”, they should write “sweep and clear”. It was important to have one of two types of stories: one that will capture the readers’ hearts, or one that shows how we are winning. After Joker mentions a possible attack on US bases during the Tet Holiday, the bases gets attacked. They are attacked while the soldiers tell Joker that he hasn’t truly been “in the shit” long enough because he doesn’t have the thousand yard stare. The soldiers treat this thousand yard stare as a rite of passage. After this attack, Joker and “Rafterman” are sent into the front lines.
On the helicopter ride to the front lines, Joker and Rafterman watch as the gunner has a fun time shooting down Vietnamese people. He has had no instruction to shoot, but he finds a particular enjoyment in this senseless killing. This guy is the first person these two soldiers see, and he is a pointlessly killing maniac. When the soldiers meet their squad, Joker and “Animal Mother” get into a verbal stand-off. While Animal Mother asks questions in anger, Joker continues with his typical string of “John Wayne” quotes. Throughout the movie, Joker speaks like the lone hero “John Wayne”, which gives the impression that he is, or at least aspires to be, a lone hero in the Vietnam War.
The Squad spends the ending scenes of the film fighting against a mysterious sniper who kills three of their soldiers. The sniper turns out to be a Vietnamese girl no more than 15 years old. The soldiers injure her, and Joker ends her misery by shooting her in the head. This is an extremely moving scene that compares the soldiers of the United States with those of Vietnam. They are all merely children. This notion of soldiers in childhood is given an example when the soldiers sing “The Mickey Mouse March”. The Mickey Mouse March was the song sung at the end of the “Mickey Mouse Club Show”: a Disney program with a very young audience. When the show closed, the children actors on the show would sing this song. When the soldiers sing this song, it reminds the viewer that these soldiers are only kids marching to the end of the war.