Full Metal Jacket and the personal horrors of war | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Full Met­al Jack­et and the per­son­al hor­rors of war

05 May 2019

Words by William Carroll

Military personnel in camouflage uniforms and helmets, carrying assault rifles, standing in a palm tree-filled environment.
Military personnel in camouflage uniforms and helmets, carrying assault rifles, standing in a palm tree-filled environment.
Stan­ley Kubrick’s thrilling study of the Viet­nam War choos­es indi­vid­ual nar­ra­tives over a col­lec­tive moral message.

In the final 30 min­utes of Full Met­al Jack­et, Pri­vate James Jok­er” Davis (Matthew Modine) nav­i­gates the apoc­a­lyp­tic ruins of Hue City along­side six oth­er marines, under the com­mand of Sergeant Robert Cow­boy” Evans (Arliss Howard). An unseen sniper, nes­tled some­where up in the flam­ing high-ris­es, begins fir­ing upon the com­pa­ny. The sol­diers hun­ker down in the burned-out waste­land, accept­ing their lot in a dev­as­tat­ing­ly futile war. Smoke swirls around steel, flames burn indef­i­nite­ly, and in each glimpsed shad­ow there is only the pos­si­bil­i­ty of death.

Per­haps the most telling aspect of Kubrick’s unortho­dox take on the Viet­nam War, a his­tor­i­cal event that has since become Hol­ly­wood can­non fod­der, is the sheer inti­ma­cy of the film’s con­clud­ing sequences. There are sim­ply the sev­en marines and the lone sniper. No oth­er soul stirs among the ruins, ruins which look delib­er­ate­ly like a set and not the stage of a full-scale mil­i­tary cam­paign. Every­thing is pared down, atten­u­at­ed and at strik­ing odds with the fre­net­ic abuse and col­lec­tive iden­ti­ty of the basic train­ing camp that com­pris­es the film’s first half.

War films often make it their modus operan­di to tell the sto­ries of nations, to eschew detailed indi­vid­ual nar­ra­tives in favour of the macro­cos­mic. From Richard Attenborough’s A Bridge Too Far to Christo­pher Nolan’s Dunkirk, cin­e­ma has enjoyed match­ing the sheer mag­ni­tude of war in visu­al form.

Full Met­al Jack­et stands apart pre­cise­ly because it denounces such endeav­ours, approach­ing the Viet­nam war at first through the oppos­ing psy­ches of Jok­er and Pri­vate Pyle (Vin­cent D’Onofrio) and lat­er via a small com­pa­ny of marines. There are few scenes with rank­ing offi­cers por­ing over blue­prints and maps, the arche­typ­al expo­si­tion­al scene in any war film, nor is there shot after shot of marines mov­ing en masse to and from the front­line. There is sim­ply the hell of the basic train­ing, and the hell of Hue, as seen by the unlucky few.

Kubrick’s styl­is­tic deci­sions can be inter­pret­ed as a com­men­tary on PTSD, a recur­rent theme in Full Met­al Jack­et. From Pri­vate Pyle’s men­tal dete­ri­o­ra­tion to the treat­ment of the thou­sand-yard stare (the per­fect accom­pa­ni­ment to Kubrick’s own obses­sion with gaze), the trou­bled psy­che of the indi­vid­ual sol­dier becomes the high­est cal­i­bre bul­let in Kubrick’s mag­a­zine. Thus, the most hor­rif­ic scene of the film comes not from the bat­tle­field, but from with­in the osten­si­bly secure envi­ron­ment of the basic train­ing camp: Pyle’s sui­cide. With stalk­ing cam­era shots and eerie ambi­ent dron­ing, Joker’s dis­cov­ery of Pyle in the wash­room of the bunkhouse is one of Kubrick’s most chill­ing scenes to date.

Pyle, a man who has not even been to the front­line, looks past the cam­era with a haunt­ed, insane stare as he begins load­ing 7.62mm full met­al jack­et’ rounds into his rifle. What fol­lows is the film’s most icon­ic act of vio­lence, and Kubrick’s most damn­ing cri­tique of sys­tem­at­ic abuse to sol­diers both in bat­tle and with­out. Pyle’s per­son­al nar­ra­tive is ulti­mate­ly cut short, but the bar­ing of his vul­ner­a­ble, piti­ful self dur­ing the film’s first act pro­vides enough raw sub­stance for his sto­ry to con­tin­ue haunt­ing the film thereafter.

Pla­toon and Apoc­a­lypse Now took the Viet­namese jun­gles as their set­tings, apt­ly explor­ing pri­mal human instinct among hang­ing vines and humid swamps. Kubrick’s focus on the Bat­tle of Hue sub­verts this arche­typ­al back­drop in favour of more famil­iar urban des­o­la­tion. Rather than per­son­al nar­ra­tives break­ing down, becom­ing insane odysseys of flesh and blood à la William Kurtz, Full Met­al Jack­et keeps its nar­ra­to­r­i­al head above the water and eyes fixed firm­ly on Jok­er throughout.

Joker’s nar­ra­tive may not be the most detailed, in fact we learn very lit­tle about Kubrick’s pro­tag­o­nist beyond his belief in the dual­i­ty of man’ and a dry sense of humour, but he is all we have. The audi­ence patrols the streets and ducks into cov­er along­side him. There are no pro­longed sweep­ing shots of Viet­nam in Kubrick’s reper­toire here. Only the same inva­sive cam­er­a­work for which he is now famous, cam­er­a­work that melds every­thing into a nar­ra­tive, char­ac­ter or object alike.

Full Met­al Jack­et isn’t the best war film ever made – it’s arguably not even the best war film about Viet­nam – but its intro­spec­tive, close-up por­tray­al of war on the big screen marks a water­shed moment in the genre. Kubrick’s film is remem­bered for screamed exple­tives and psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse, but what per­haps should be remem­bered is the sim­ple lives it explores in a war that was any­thing but. Joker’s sar­don­ic bon mot, I am in a world of shit. Yes. But I am alive. And I am not afraid,” is the take­away from Kubrick’s tour of the sev­en­teenth par­al­lel. War is the sto­ry of indi­vid­u­als, not armies.

You might like