A Hardball World

“Mandated by the Geneva Convention of 1922, the purpose of enclosing bullets with full metal jackets was to reduce combat fatalities. The bullets were designed to pass through bodies and, if no major organs were struck, only to wound the victim. Before metal jackets, bullets often detoured inside the body. That the 6.5 Carcano ammunition was designed to do exactly what it did on President Kennedy and Governor Connally is often ignored.”
– Gerald Posner, Case Closed

Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket is not about the Kennedy assassination, of course, but it does reference it; a Marine Corps drill instructor tells his troops about the shooting exploits of Marine sharpshooters Lee Oswald in Dallas and Charles Whitman in the Tower in Austin. There’s something like pride and admiration in his voice, for the skill of the marksmanship if nothing else. You hear something like that and you remember it. It sticks in your mind. If you’re not lucky, it wakes you up in the middle of the night sometimes, asking yourself, “What did he mean by that?”

Let me illustrate. I’ve never been to boot camp. I went to law school, which is not as bad as Parris Island, but it lasts longer and the pay is worse. One day, I went to class in the middle of Austin’s dreaded cedar fever season; I felt miserable and my throat was raw from coughing. Naturally, I got called on in my business law class, and I made my excuse; sorry, I can’t talk. The prof looked right through me. “I understand, Mr. Edmonds, I had a sore throat too, when I was called on in law school.” Everyone laughed but me. I remember that moment, but that’s just about the only moment I remember in that class. I’ve forgotten everything else (except for the D I got), and to this day I couldn’t tell you how to form a subchapter S corporation if my life depended on it.

If Full Metal Jacket — especially the second half of the movie — seems choppy and odd, it has something to do with the way we remember things. Full Metal Jacket doesn’t have one cohesive narrative because it’s less or a movie than a collection of memories strung together in chronological order. The things that are remembered range from the insignificant (a haircut, cleaning a barracks bathroom, a tedious staff meeting, an encounter with a brash Vietnamese prostitute) to the mesmerizing (the incomparable R. Lee Ermey’s tirades, a birthday party for a dead North Vietnamese soldier) to the horrifying (the bloody climax of boot camp, a sniper atteck in bullet-riddled Hue).

The memories presented in Full Metal Jacket all share a common theme; the hardening of men for war. The first (and most coherent) half of the movie takes place on Parris Island, South Carolina, Marine Corps boot camp. The soldiers march and clean and learn new skills and climb obstacles and serve as the focus for some profane, creative verbal stylistics from Ermey. All the time, they’re getting tougher, becoming more and more gung-ho, becoming more and more a part of the Green Machine. All except for Private “Gomer Pyle” (Vincent D’Onofrio, who’s gone on to bigger and better things), the platoon’s scapegoat who’s half a step behind and building up a huge reservoir of internal rage.

The second half of the movie follows boot camp graduate Joker (Matthew Modine, who hasn’t gone on to bigger and better things) around South Vietnam. Joker is a war correspondent behind the lines, chafing under the authority of an arrogant pompous Southern public affairs officer who’s trying to spin the media coverage of the war. (No, Al Gore hasn’t called and said that Full Metal Jacket was based on his life the way that Love Story was, but give him time.) After the Tet Offensive, Joker gets to go out into the field, where he finds out if the toughening and dehumanization of boot camp actually took root or not.

Kubrick presents Joker as an everyman character, which is necessary as we’re seeing Parris Island and Vietnam through his eyes. Modine’s always been an average actor at best, but that works in his favor, though. Despite his annoying voice-overs — which could have been edited out, no loss — he has our empathy. We understand, all too well, why he wears that peace symbol and has “Born to Kill” written on his helmet. Joker is our ambassador to the hardball world of the Marine Corps, and the movie rightly ends at the point when he enters that world fully and leaves the audience behind.

The major point of divergence between our memories and the memories of Private Joker is the skill of Stanley Kubrick. Where memories tend to be incomplete and hazy, Full Metal Jacket is sharp and clear. The photography in the boot camp scenes is nothing special — Parris Island not being noted for great natural beauty — but the Vietnam scenes are compelling and hyper-realistic. Full Metal Jacket is not your standard Vietnam movie in that it spends little time in the jungle; most of the battle scenes are in the ruined town of Hue. The genius of Full Metal Jacket is that the battle scenes look like they were shot on location in Hell itself. The last battle against a lone sniper and the last scene of singing Marines marching past a city on fire are wrenching, horrifying, and utterly memorable. Private Joker’s memory is not a comfortable place to be, but all hail to the late great Stanley Kubrick for sharing those memories with us.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 4th, 2006 at 8:00 am and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.