A return in some ways to our starting point of Dr. Strangelove, Full Metal Jacket is a jarring anti-war film following a platoon of Marines from their infancy in training to the front lines in Vietnam.
The film primarily follows Private. Joker (Matthew Modine), though perhaps its most touching and horrific incident is focused more on Pvt. Pyle (Vincent D’Onofrio), a marine who can’t take the abuse and torture of training at Paris Island. While I have no idea how realistic or unrealistic the hazing is that Pyle undergoes in this film, I have heard from many marines that basic is brutal and that Kubrick captures a part of what they go through.
The film’s main focus is the same throughout the training and wartime scenes: the serious dehumanization and near-brainwashing that has to take place to transform an ordinary citizen into a warrior capable of fighting against an ideology.
Kubrick captures the destruction and pain that the war causes in a unique way because his focus is not on the families of our fighting men and women but is rather on those men and women themselves. His message is tactful, because it does not question the bravery or loyalty of our soldiers (a thing which we should not do), but rather questions the motives of the Vietnam war and more importantly the justifications for it.
Is there any cause that is worth the brutality and ruthlessness we must subject our sons and daughters to for war? Kubrick’s answer is not a definitive no (understandably), but is rather a measured suggestion that we consider carefully all of the costs of going to war.
This prescience is astounding for a film made in 1987, because it helps to explain what causes the PTSD of our heroes today and begs its viewers to question their ethics. Moreover, Kubrick is yet again able to question the motives (tucked away in human nature) that prompt us to go to war, and to warn us of the damage that war can do to our souls.