The inhumanity of War !!!

Rating: 8/10 (7 November 2017)

One of the many characteristic aspects of Kubrick's cinema is the deliberate lack of humanity and intimacy. He made it a point to keep the viewer at a distance from the characters and the circumstances. 'Full Metal Jacket' is divided into two specific parts. The first part involving the basic training in the boot camp, benefits immensely from Kubrick's emotionally distant filmmaking. This first part is a brilliantly directed, shot and acted satire on the dehumanisation of young boys in the army. We see the innocent and honorable masculinity of these boys who want to do themselves, their families and their country proud, get replaced by toxic masculinity which involves killing your identity and your humanity, equating the lust for sex with the lust for violence, keeping all your emotions suppressed and in the end becoming ultra-aggressive, remorseless, animalistic killers. R. Lee Ermey pretty much single-handedly carries this first part of the film through sheer verbal aggression. The character of Sergeant Hartman played by Ermey is pretty much the devil just like the character of Terence Fletcher played by J. K. Simmons in 'Whiplash'. Just like great satire, there are numerous sequences and moments in this part where the audience will feel like laughing and then within a few seconds feel disturbed and disgusted for laughing at something terrible and reprehensible.
While Kubrick's emotionally distant filmmaking is beneficial to the first part of the film, it actually to some extent becomes a weakness in the second part. In the second part, we move to Vietnam where we see the soldiers having to execute everything that they learnt in boot camp, at the real battlefield. Now there certainly are moments in this second half that I love like the sequence of the talking head interviews of the soldiers which further underline how pointless this war was and how clueless even the soldiers were about their missions and the general purpose of their temporary existence in Vietnam. I also especially loved the extended situational set- piece that the film ends with as it provides a devastating and perhaps a sorrowful conclusion to the arc of the character of Sergeant Joker played by Matthew Modine who for the major part of the film remains the voice of reason, logic and humanity. However apart from these aforementioned scenes, this second half of 'Full Metal Jacket' lacks a sense of cohesion. It feels like a random collection of vignettes, some of which aren't very interesting. The reason why some of the vignettes seem uninteresting is Kubrick's refusal to allow us into the mental state of the characters that are introduced in the second half or give us any insight into their psyches apart from some surface level behavioral tendencies. There are many scenes where we see the soldiers talk to each other and spend time together, but those scenes rang hollow to me and felt somewhat forced and artificial. This inability to completely appreciate the second half of the film on my part could be completely subjective. Since I loved the first half so much, maybe the change in setting and tone that takes place was always going to make it tough for the second half to measure up when compared to the first.
Technically 'Full Metal Jacket' isn't as showy and attention grabbing as some of Kubrick's other films, however it still retains a lot of his characteristic visual touches like the use of one-point perspective and the use of steadicam,etc. The urban, ground level combat scenes are very well staged and directed. The production design has to be admired a lot for those scenes too. From an acting standpoint, I have already mentioned R. Lee Ermey for his brilliant performance. I think Matthew Modine and Vincent D'Onofrio deserve special mentions too for coming up with contrasting, yet equally compelling performances respectively.
In conclusion, I'll say 'Full Metal Jacket' doesn't quite achieve greatness due to the flawed second half of the film. But it's still an exceptionally good movie that comes close to greatness due to the incredibly brilliant first half which I think is as good and as powerful as anything Kubrick has ever done in a visceral scene. It's a film that can be directly connected to 'Paths of Glory' and 'Dr. Strangelove' in terms of Kubrick's criticism of institutional authority, dogmatic patriotism and toxic masculinity. It's most certainly worth recommending.