Full+Metal+Jacket

Stanley Kubrick’s // Full Metal Jacket // is a Vietnam War film released in 1987. The film explores the horrors of war as well as the lifestyles of the soldiers while they were in Vietnam, through the eyes of a combat correspondent, a journalist for the Marine Corps newspaper ‘Stars and Stripes’. Contextual history is not important for your analysis. The subject of the film is essentially covered by the main journalist soldier Pvt. J.T. ‘Joker’ Davis’s body armor and helmet. He has “Born To Kill” written on his helmet, but has a peace sign button on his chest. When questioned by a commanding officer, he says that he was “trying to suggest something about the duality of man”. In my opinion, that one line sums up the theme of the film.

Kubrick doesn’t use many short snappy short clips, bur rather opts to use longer takes. Scenes such as when the drill sergeant is walking along the bunks and yelling and insulting the “maggots”, has a few short edits on key parts of his monologue, but otherwise smoothly follows the drill sergeant around and covers his movements as he intimidates all the son-to-be soldiers. I personally think that Kubrick may have originally intended to actually just use one long single take for the whole scene, however it was most likely not possible to do during scenes where the sergeant gets physical with some of the kids. The lighting is fairly standard for the whole film, with most of it taking place outdoors and a lot of moving takes being used, I feel that while there was a lot of planning involved, there most likely wasn’t too much lighting. In indoor scenes, however, such as the scene where Pvt. ‘Pyle’ shoots the drill sergeant before kissing the barrel, the lighting is used in the dark ‘head’ effectively to highlight the menacingly crazy expression in his eyes. I also spotted three-point lighting during the interview scenes when several soldiers are being interviewed for a tv crew inside of a half-destroyed building. Finally, what I most found interesting of this film was Kubrick’s use of music. The whole film barely has any music in it, and most of the music that //is// used is happy music to highlight the fact that the soldiers did manage to have fun from time to time. The only scene where the music was used in an unhappy way that I remember is, again, Pyle’s suicide scene. Other than that, Kubrick chose to let the sound of firing shots and explosions fill up most of the sound space, or songs that the soldiers themselves were signing as they marched.

P.S. I now understand the reference made in 2 Live Crew’s “Me So Horny”. Makes it that much funnier.