In Stanley Kubricks Full Metal Jacket (1987), men get stripped of their humanity in a Marine boot camp before being sent to war in Vietnam. This is one view. The other view is that men get the best training ever to help them survive in the battlefield, where killing can be both insane and, as in the final act of the film, the humane thing to do. Kubrick was good at presenting his audiences with self-evident contradictions and moral dilemmas. Here, he is bordering on the obsessive. For example, a soldier has Born to Kill written on his helmet while he is wearing the peace symbol on his chest near his heart. Is this some sick joke? No. It is a statement about the duality of man; the Jungian thing. The military realism in the first part of this film is unique in the War genre. It is so absurd and incredible as to be a parody, except that he casted a real life Marine Drill Instuctor to play the part of a fictional one. This film is full of hilarious quotable quotes, but my favourite is less so: Because I am hard, you will not like me. But the more you hate me, the more you will learn. https://youtube/watch?v=GTQAXX08A-s
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 01:09:33 +0000