Kubrick's patchwork of war

Rating: 7/10 (14 February 2015)

Divided in two parts, this movie first looks like a patchwork of two completely different films. The first part shows young men entering a combat training camp. They do not look like the stereotype of soldiers: some are skinny, others are fat, and they do not master guns as if they were born with. The role of the Sergeant is simple: turn them into killing machines, whatever method it requires: humiliation or violence. (But one appreciates him, or maybe appreciates to hate him.) Their only wife? : Their rifles. Their only enemy? Communism. But despite this tough training, they are still humans, and friendships grow on the battlefield. But one of them, weaker than the others, is totally brainwashed by the doctrine he is taught, beyond the expectations of the Sergeant. Then, one understands that killing machines are dangerous for everyone, including those who created them. The second part occurs in Vietnam, following a former soldier -of the first part's training camp- who has become a war journalist. Though it takes place on battlefield, it seemed to me that the second part was way more relaxed than the first, where tension was omnipresent. Here, brotherhood "hides" slaughters behind jokes, though those slaughters are shown in an explicit way. The second part expresses the duality of these men, who are ready to give their lives, but less for patriotic reasons, than to save and protect their companions, because they kept their humanity. And that is what, in my opinion, links the two parts: once at war, they apply what they learnt in the training camp: killing, dealing with horror, but keeping in mind they are common humans.