A good movie for a war film

Rating: 9/10 (1 March 2015)

Full Metal Jacket is a movie, directed by Stanley Kubrick which is, according to me, quite complete. Indeed, we can divide it in two parts : the preparation and the action. In 1967, a group of men is prepared by officer Hartman to be sent in Vietnam. Among those men : Gomer Pyle and Joker. Hartman is the stereotype of the army officer : he doesn't talk but screams and reminds all the time the future soldiers that they are nothing more than the ground zero, they are not even human. It's actually well-known that killing people at war makes you so much more human  The viewer discovers the eight weeks of preparation, the special relation the soldiers have with their gun (called with girl names). Plus showing the difficulty of the trainings, the movie also shows the humiliation : Gomer Pyle, who seems to be stupid is actually psychologically unstable and he is during the preparation pushed too much : he has at the end of the first part a mental breakdown. In the second part the soldiers are shown in Vietnam and what I liked in this part is the portrayal made of the soldiers. The first part is quite light since it is fun and there is irony. The second part is a shock and reminds the viewer that it is a war film. Different soldiers speak and they have different point of view : some of them are the stereotype of the good soldier –like a Rambo- , some think that Vietnam doesn't actually want that war, that they are supposed to fight with the south of Vietnam but those are hidden, they have the feeling they are not killing the good people  The main idea is that they don't really understand why they are here, they feel like Vietnamese don't want them in Vietnam, like if they were trapped in this war. Those soldiers are sent to Vietnam whereas their country is blaming them, the Vietnam is blaming there too : they feel lonely. At the end of the movie, at the end of the war, the soldier's conclusion is that they are alive, in a terrible world, but alive. My conclusion about that film is that Stanley Kubrick made a really good job, in not directing a stereotypical film war, which is one of the most difficult things to do.