Full Metal Jacket Film Analysis
Ironically it was Cimino who reminded Stone of nothing he experienced in Vietnam, and talked him into resurrecting “Platoon”. Stone portrays the war as more of a conflict between American soldiers internally rather than a conflict with the Vietcong. Platoon tells the story of Vietnam from the point of view of a naïve young soldier. The first thing he sees when arriving is rows of bodies being readied to be ship back to the United States. He finds out that other soldiers don’t associate with the new guys because they haven’t put in their time. As the new recruit gains experience in Vietnam, he realizes that war is not only regulated to fighting the known enemy, the NVA/Vietcong, but his fellow comrades as well. Throughout the film you see the
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The movie begins in basic training, where Kubrick gives the audience a taste of how basic training process was used to dehumanize the young recruits and shape them into the killers that was stereotypically created by such process. The first half of the film follows one recruit (Private Joker) and the witnessing of the mental self-destruction of another recruit, who in the closing scenes of boot camp kills his drill instructor. In the second half of the film it follows Private Joker in Vietnam as a war correspondent for the military. He would witness prostitution, friends dying, and realize they were fighting an enemy made up of women and children. Stanley Kubrick was a filmmaker who refused to comment on the meaning of his films, because he never wanted to presume to offer the audience the “right’ answers. By offering the “right” answer, audiences would avoid the emotional and intellectual struggle that the film demands. It can be argued though that it attempts to show the vile irony between the desire for combat and the true horrors of war, while suggesting that America is no longer the innocent and upstanding country that it claims to be. Much like Platoon, it’s seen to attack both the mission itself and America’s military authorities in the Vietnam
The movie begins in basic training, where Kubrick gives the audience a taste of how basic training process was used to dehumanize the young recruits and shape them into the killers that was stereotypically created by such process. The first half of the film follows one recruit (Private Joker) and the witnessing of the mental self-destruction of another recruit, who in the closing scenes of boot camp kills his drill instructor. In the second half of the film it follows Private Joker in Vietnam as a war correspondent for the military. He would witness prostitution, friends dying, and realize they were fighting an enemy made up of women and children. Stanley Kubrick was a filmmaker who refused to comment on the meaning of his films, because he never wanted to presume to offer the audience the “right’ answers. By offering the “right” answer, audiences would avoid the emotional and intellectual struggle that the film demands. It can be argued though that it attempts to show the vile irony between the desire for combat and the true horrors of war, while suggesting that America is no longer the innocent and upstanding country that it claims to be. Much like Platoon, it’s seen to attack both the mission itself and America’s military authorities in the Vietnam