Stanley Kubrick
Full Metal Jacket

Marines. Machines.

Full Metal Jacket is a film about the decision to kill and the loss of humanity.

In the first part, we see how people are transformed into killers. This process of dehumanization causes Private Pyle, already slow-witted, to go insane and kill himself because he can no longer bear to live.
In the second part, Joker works as a reporter and witnesses all the atrocities happening in Vietnam. The structure is weak but, once again, it aims to show how the army leaders are unable to manage the situation. Joker speaks without real understanding because he has never fought on the front line.
The third part shows how men become killers. Joker finds out firsthand what it's like to see killing. He is unable to fight, all that training was useless because he still possesses intelligence and humanity. It is humanity that drives him to give the coup de grâce to the sniper girl; he feels compassion, not hatred, for his first victim.

The dual nature of Joker, killer and compassionate individual, is emphasized by his clothing (the words "Born To Kill" on his helmet and the peace badge on his chest) and his words during an interview ("I wanted so badly to see exotic Vietnam, the jewel of Southeast Asia. I wanted to meet interesting, stimulating people, with an ancient civilization. And blow them all away").

Many recurring themes: hand-to-hand combat of the recruits during training (but war is fought with rifles), the fixed stare (Hartman always has it, Private Pyle has it when Hartman talks about Whitman and Oswald and before killing himself, most Vietnamese have it always, Joker has it at the end when he kills the girl), theater (Hartman plays a role in the theater of war, just to give an example), masks/disguises (journalists pretend to tell the truth), ever-recurring technology in Kubrick (rifles, tools of war), the fatal mistake (Joker tries to attribute political and moral significance to a situation devoid of politics or ethics. He must kill or be killed. He has been trained to kill and now must use what he has learned to survive, without thinking. Thinking is his fatal mistake), the paralytic/disease (Private Pyle is slow-witted), the collapse of society (Parris Island has brutal rules but is a safe place, the army journalists' world is hypocritical and dishonest, but safe, on the field there are no rules and no friends and the only concern is survival), family relations (the only family is at Parris Island and disperses little by little during the war), Mickey Mouse (Hartman enters the bathrooms where Joker and Private Pyle are shouting: "What is this Mickey Mouse shit?", in the last scene the platoon marches through the burning city singing the Mickey Mouse anthem).

Delving deeper, something very necessary for a masterpiece of this kind, we see Kubrick's fine hand: the symmetry of the barracks, the noir/expressionism (especially when Private Pyle kills Hartman), the handheld camera (Kubrick fell in love with the steadicam because it no longer gives that feeling of watching a documentary conveyed by the jerky motions of the handheld camera. A comparison can be drawn here with the battle scenes in Dr. Strangelove), circles (circular doors in Vietnam, soldiers in a circle around the two dead soldiers), the backward tracking (Hartman reviewing the recruits, the run during training, the marines' parade, the platoon advancing along the road, the patrol car advancing), the voiceover (present albeit occasionally), the military and soldier language/jargon (something that greatly recalls A Clockwork Orange).

Furthermore, there are many differences between the film and Gustav Hasford's novel "The Short-Timers". Although many elements are the same, the book is much stronger than the film. First of all, Joker's personality, which in the book is harsher, more sarcastic, darker. In the middle section, he rebels against all the abominations he has to endure as a journalist, kills the girl out of pity, and is transferred to the front. In the end, when the patrol is targeted by the sniper girl and Cowboy is hit, Joker takes command and decides to kill his friend. In doing so, he prevents the others from launching an attack like John Wayne and getting killed in a useless act of heroism. Joker saves his companions, hoping to survive future events. It is a much darker ending than that of the film.

In conclusion, I would say that after the incredible verbal assault of the first 40 minutes, thanks to Lee Ermey's superb performance, the viewer's interest decreases following the meek Joker's storyline. Overall, the most atrocious scenes are not particularly terrifying, although the sequence where the gunner indiscriminately fires on civilians from the helicopter is frightening. Interest is rekindled in the sniper sequence, but its meaning is hard to grasp because Kubrick does not clearly explain his intentions. Throughout the film, Joker retains his humanity, despite the army's brainwashing, and in the end, he is forced to make moral choices. However, he consoles himself with the thought of still being alive, even in the midst of hell ("Sure, I live in a world of shit, yes, but I'm alive. And I'm not afraid anymore").