Full+Metal+Jacket+Diego


 * Full Metal Jacket**


 * Plot:** Full Metal Jacket is a film directed by Stanley Kubrick, about the Vietnam war. The film is split up into two sections, the first being when you meet a majority of who will become the sort of main characters, as they have just joined the army and have been assigned to their commander for training. The characters train there and all seems to be going well, except for one soldier who is struggling and is causing the other soldiers to be punished for his problems. In response they try to teach him a lesson by beating him with socks with soap bars one night. Slowly but surely he begins to lose his mind, until one night the protagonist Private Joker finds him sitting in the bathroom with a loaded rifle. After trying to calm him down, and their commander arriving, he shoots the commander and then commits suicide.

The second part of the movie begins some years later when they're in the war. Private Joker is a journalist, and they're in Vietnam. Throughout the movie he gets assigned to his brother's platoon, and follows them through their lives as they have to kill the enemy as they also lose allies around them. The movie ends when they approach a clearing, where a few of the soldiers, including private Joker's bother, are shot and killed by a sniper hiding in a building. They eventually reach the building and wound the sniper, who turns out to be a young vietnamese girl. The soldiers leave it up to private Joker to decide whether he kills her or not, and he does. The movie ends with the American soldiers walking in the night past all of the carnage and burning buildings, singing a song called the Mickey Mouse March.


 * Theme:** The theme that Kubrick sort of presents in the movie is how people can have distorted views, and determining fantasy and lies from reality. This can be seen in the character as well, private Joker, who works for the Stars and Stripes journalism crew in the army, and is always giving trouble to the commander, cracking jokes about the truth. His first story also, according to the commander, is to much the truth, saying that it doesn't inspire troops so he is told to make up lies and change it.


 * Tone:** The tone of the film is generally very serious one. It is also however very truthful in the sense that no one person is really looked at in depth, and you see blood and carnage, it's not just someone gets shot from a mile away and falls down.


 * Diegesis:**

1) The first non-diagetic element is a song that is played during a scene where the soldiers are slowly making their way up to a building with enemies inside. The music is a collection of mallets hitting long sheets of metal to make a sort of thundering, booming noise that gives a feeling of distant gunshots and bombs.

2) The first few frame consist of the title of the film "Full Metal Jacket", which is for sure not present in the world of the film.

3) Another non-diagetic element present in the film is another song called "These boots are made for walkin'. " It is clear that this song is not present in the character's world, because it is in a scene outside, and in order for it to be diagetic the music would have to sound sort of distant as if it were coming from a speaker.


 * Mise-en-scene:**

1) In an early scene, the commander is addressing the soldiers, and there's a poster that says 'pride builds men' in the background, which directly relates to the tone of the movie, this serious "tough-guy" attitude that the war deals with.



2) In another scene, all of the soldiers and the setting are almost all green. The uniforms are all green, even the field takes up most of the shot, only the sand is of a different color, but his shows the transparency of the soldiers, that there isn't much difference to any one of the soldiers.

3) In any scene with the barracks it can be seen that they are well lit, which also relates to this transparency idea, as there are few shadows and most everything again is the same color of green, except for the floor which is a reddish-orange.

4) In another scene you see a shot where a white towel is laid out at night, and a bar of soap is place in it. In this scene, everything is dark, except for a bluish light which is supposed to simulate the moon. However, the light's not very clear, as there are rough shadows that give a very dark tone, much like the tone of the war. 5) In that same scene you also get a shot where after having been held down and beaten with the towels filled with soap bars by his own comrades, Private Pyle sits up in his bed in pain and crying, but his whole body and face are lit, again exposing his true feelings and not leaving anything up to imagination. 6) In another shot the camera pans in on Private Pyle's face, which is a sort of loopy, zoned-out, and dark one. The camera pushing in on his face, adds to this dark, and uneasiness. The same uneasiness that is present in war. 7) In another shot, the camera pans out as the soldiers run towards the camera charging at the enemy in a sense. However, it is hard to differentiate the different soldiers, as they are wearing the exact same things and have the same expressions. The little depth that the soldiers have is related to the truth of soldiers and war. 8) Again the tone of darkness, and murder is brought up when Private Pyle shoots himself but Kubrick doesn't switch shots. Instead you see Pyle shoot himself in the mouth, and the blood that comes out the back of his head, it's not left to imagination but is clearly shown.

9) In another shot a Mickey Mouse doll can be seen in the background, which sort of hints to this theme of a unit and sameness, as the song they sing in the end is the Mickey Mouse club theme song, but is altered with lyrics more about pride and being a unit. 10) In another scene when the enemy is trying to attack the military base at night, they try to rush in but are shot down by heavy machine guns from the Americans. However the camera is placed far away, to the point where you can't make out faces. This again leaves out the emotional aspect of the killing, and just leaves the clear statement of death for the viewer.