There's a major star in Full Metal Jacket:
Stanley Kubrick's direction. Resurfacing like a cinematic cicada after
a seven-year absence, the American expatriate has overtaken the homegrown
Viet Pack of Coppolas, Ciminos and Stones to make the most eloquent
and exacting vision of the war to date. Ironically, Jacket
is the most synthetic "Vietnam film" thus far. Kubrick's screenplay
(cowritten with novelists Gustav Hasford and Michael Herr) is an adaptation
of Hasford's The Short Timers, and Kubrick, who is not a veteran, ingested
countless films, videotapes and books for background.
Most significant, he built his own Vietnam, D.W. Griffith-like, in Britain.
Kubrick's Vietnam is primarily an abandoned gas-works near the Thames.
His South Carolina boot camp is England's Bassingbourn military barracks.
Jacket is hardly history – but as an artistic statement it's compelling
stuff. On this Far East facsimile, Kubrick has layered sound and image
– leaving no shot, click or segue to chance. To watch Jacket is
to watch the beauty of a complicated surgical operation.
In it, Pvt. "Joker" (Matthew Modine) enlists at Parris Island,
where Gunnery Sgt. Hartman (a crisp, stunning performance by former
Marine Lee Ermey) makes would-bes into killer bees. The story then moves
to the front, where Joker joins Stars & Stripes – the military
newspaper with the double-edged duty of boosting morale and reporting
war news. Seeking firsthand action to report on, Joker tags along with
a youthful, guts-and-glory outfit about to meet a mysterious, deadly
enemy via the Tet Offensive.
The modern-day jester Joker joins the fray, but while Marines kiss the
dirt with requisite vigor, he remains detached, retaining his requisite
objectivity. He keeps his conscience on ice with dark humor and frequent
John Wayne imitations ("Listen heyah, Pilgrim," etc), but
his frozen morality can't prevent the one-on-one confrontations he seeks
to avoid, including one that makes for the film's climactic
finale.
Although the elements of the story are simple and precise, Kubrick infuses
a dreamlike, fatalistic quality. Sometimes the characters come alive,
other times they seem like so many props for Kubrick's smoldering landscapes
and tracking camera movements. The finale, a harrowing cat-and-mouse
game with a sniper, ends in a building that – with its forever-burning
(and strategically placed) fires -- looks like a satanic temple. Kubrick's
soundtrack is characteristically dynamic and explosive – whether
it's the hardened trudge of soldier's boots (one of the many songs he
uses is Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Were Made For Walking"),
the omnipresent crackle of burning buildings or the prolonged bass note
in the final scene that never lets up. Inspired with technique rather
than overblown with it, Kubrick, the filmmaker's filmmaker, lays one
on you. — Desson Howe, Washington Post
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