How the bell sounds

Rating: 10/10 (14 November 2002)

If this movie was about war, it might be seen as mediocre. That's perhaps why there are so many people deceived with the development of the story.
Full Metal Jacket is about the way the human soul reacts to warfare; The way we prepare men for it, the way we look at it, not only the way we suffer it but also the way we 'see' it. The films character 'Joker' is like the playing card with the same name: It changes 'ad hoc'. More than the anti-war person that he happens to be, 'Joker' is the distant observer of a phenomenon he doesn't regard as his own but one that he is progressively part of. This dynamic process, from the absent recruit to the compassionate executer of a girl warrior happens through the eyes of a camera, the scenario being the very 'ink' that paints blood black. That may be the main reason for the sequence of the second part of the film. Kubrik spares the spectator to an excessive exposure to the 'horrors' of war concentrating, rather, on the relationship of a conscious human, 'Joker', with the 'facts of war' as he becomes progressively familiar with them (that's why Joker is a journalist, not a nurse). Far from an unrealistic and static picture of war, the second part of the film is relatively stripped of action of men suffering war in order to expose war as an external phenomenon, through Joker's pictures. That's how Joker sees it in the begining of the second part. We have here a picture not of war itself, but the 'ways in war' of the type of warrior that went through the first part of the film and, eventually, survived and the critical observation made by Joker of their deeds. Note that if 'Joker' was pro-war character the film could be quite the same except for the feeling expressed by Joker himself regarding the killing of the Vietcong girl. Full Metal Jacket starts with a critical analysis of the distortion of human values by army training or, as one might see it, 'restraining' of the human being and ends with a reflection on the necessity and the inevitability of that distortion through the rendition of Joker's character.
The here is not 'Form whom the bell tolls', not even a remark (amongst many) that it does. Full Metal Jacket, a type of ammunition itself, is a look into the sound of the bell.
All in all, a masterpiece.