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This review contains spoilers.
Every couple of years I revisit Full Metal Jacket, hoping that it will finally click with me, and with this latest viewing, I think it’s gotten as close as it ever will. Oddly enough, I think the biggest culprit in my previously lukewarm feelings is the copy I had been watching. I own the full frame DVD from the early 2000s, which was released with the argument that Kubrick shot the movie in that ratio open-matte, with the idea that the image was composed as much for home video to be seen on fullscreen television sets as for the widescreen theatrical presentation, and therefore was “truer” to Kubrick’s vision. (The use of open matte also meant that this version offered more visual information than the theatrical release, which is the opposite of most full frame DVDs, which normally crop the sides off the frame.) This time, I decided to cough up five bucks for an HD rental and compare the versions back-to-back, and the differences are fairly dramatic. The tighter framing in the first act enhances the dramatic impact of the close-ups and the cold symmetry of Kubrick’s compositions, so that the dehumanizing effect of the training sequences is amplified. But these scenes are also heavily dependent on the intensity of the performances, namely the work by Vincent D’Onofrio and R. Lee Ermey, and I think their power is readily apparent in either version.
Once the action shifts to Vietnam, the contrast is even more noticeable. In contrast to other high profile Vietnam War movies from the time, notably Apocalypse Now and Platoon, Full Metal Jacket was shot on sets, and while the sets still look good in the full frame version, their artificiality is readily apparent in the combat scenes. The added negative space at the top of the frame and the washed colour palette have a way of belittling the action, while the tighter framing in the widescreen version allow us to become absorbed, even complicit in it. (The colours in the HD version are less anemic than the old DVD, but still lack the lush, rich hues of the other films, which makes sense as the combat in Full Metal Jacket takes place in urban settings while those other films are set mostly in the jungle.) The dramatic effect of the full frame version is interesting in its own way, but slides too easily into overt mockery when Kubrick deploys gestures like splatter movie violence, slow motion, blunt zooms and Steadicam pans, which feel queasily exhilarating in the widescreen version. (On a side note, the boot camp scenes are often referred to as the first “half”, but are closer to forty percent, if anyone cares about the math. I think the tightness of those sections, especially with their montage-like structure, makes for a forceful contrast with the more episodic Vietnam scenes, which feel structurally and stylistically less forceful in the fullscreen version.)
I think the “borrowed” feeling of the cinematic grammar is intentional, as Full Metal Jacket, despite Kubrick’s distinct signature, seems at least partially in conversation with other films. The reverse Rio Bravo scenario of the climax, where the characters attempt to lay siege to an entrenched sniper, plays like a personal nightmare for our John Wayne obsessed protagonist and directly interrogates our identification with characters who, in cinematic terms, should be the “bad guys”. And the vulgar, pitch black humour of the basic training sequences feels like the deranged inverse of something like Stripes. If that movie was about the triumph of the individual, with Bill Murray’s character remaining as much as an irreverent wise-ass at the end as he was at the beginning, Full Metal Jacket is about the defeat of said individual, a theme that landed more strongly with me this time around. During Private Pyle’s breakdown, it becomes obvious that even an agent of the institution like Hartman is so thoroughly broken by the system that he’s completely unable to process the situation at hand, and the rest of the film hands up example after example of the insidious ways that war has shaped and limited these characters’ thinking, from the oblivious propaganda pushed by Stars and Stripes to the indignation expressed by the marines towards the Vietnamese and the characters who treat the war as a a contest to rack up body counts. Private Joker’s attempts to retain his personality through humour feel stilted and impotent against the horrors at hand, and the film ends with the punchline of Joker performing a mercy killing, as war has made it so that even the closest thing to a humane act is despairing. In the words of one sociopathic door gunner, “Ain’t war hell?”
Full Metal Jacket (Kubrick, 1987)
This review contains spoilers.
Every couple of years I revisit Full Metal Jacket, hoping that it will finally click with me, and with this latest viewing, I think it’s gotten as close as it ever will. Oddly enough, I think the biggest culprit in my previously lukewarm feelings is the copy I had been watching. I own the full frame DVD from the early 2000s, which was released with the argument that Kubrick shot the movie in that ratio open-matte, with the idea that the image was composed as much for home video to be seen on fullscreen television sets as for the widescreen theatrical presentation, and therefore was “truer” to Kubrick’s vision. (The use of open matte also meant that this version offered more visual information than the theatrical release, which is the opposite of most full frame DVDs, which normally crop the sides off the frame.) This time, I decided to cough up five bucks for an HD rental and compare the versions back-to-back, and the differences are fairly dramatic. The tighter framing in the first act enhances the dramatic impact of the close-ups and the cold symmetry of Kubrick’s compositions, so that the dehumanizing effect of the training sequences is amplified. But these scenes are also heavily dependent on the intensity of the performances, namely the work by Vincent D’Onofrio and R. Lee Ermey, and I think their power is readily apparent in either version.
Once the action shifts to Vietnam, the contrast is even more noticeable. In contrast to other high profile Vietnam War movies from the time, notably Apocalypse Now and Platoon, Full Metal Jacket was shot on sets, and while the sets still look good in the full frame version, their artificiality is readily apparent in the combat scenes. The added negative space at the top of the frame and the washed colour palette have a way of belittling the action, while the tighter framing in the widescreen version allow us to become absorbed, even complicit in it. (The colours in the HD version are less anemic than the old DVD, but still lack the lush, rich hues of the other films, which makes sense as the combat in Full Metal Jacket takes place in urban settings while those other films are set mostly in the jungle.) The dramatic effect of the full frame version is interesting in its own way, but slides too easily into overt mockery when Kubrick deploys gestures like splatter movie violence, slow motion, blunt zooms and Steadicam pans, which feel queasily exhilarating in the widescreen version. (On a side note, the boot camp scenes are often referred to as the first “half”, but are closer to forty percent, if anyone cares about the math. I think the tightness of those sections, especially with their montage-like structure, makes for a forceful contrast with the more episodic Vietnam scenes, which feel structurally and stylistically less forceful in the fullscreen version.)
I think the “borrowed” feeling of the cinematic grammar is intentional, as Full Metal Jacket, despite Kubrick’s distinct signature, seems at least partially in conversation with other films. The reverse Rio Bravo scenario of the climax, where the characters attempt to lay siege to an entrenched sniper, plays like a personal nightmare for our John Wayne obsessed protagonist and directly interrogates our identification with characters who, in cinematic terms, should be the “bad guys”. And the vulgar, pitch black humour of the basic training sequences feels like the deranged inverse of something like Stripes. If that movie was about the triumph of the individual, with Bill Murray’s character remaining as much as an irreverent wise-ass at the end as he was at the beginning, Full Metal Jacket is about the defeat of said individual, a theme that landed more strongly with me this time around. During Private Pyle’s breakdown, it becomes obvious that even an agent of the institution like Hartman is so thoroughly broken by the system that he’s completely unable to process the situation at hand, and the rest of the film hands up example after example of the insidious ways that war has shaped and limited these characters’ thinking, from the oblivious propaganda pushed by Stars and Stripes to the indignation expressed by the marines towards the Vietnamese and the characters who treat the war as a a contest to rack up body counts. Private Joker’s attempts to retain his personality through humour feel stilted and impotent against the horrors at hand, and the film ends with the punchline of Joker performing a mercy killing, as war has made it so that even the closest thing to a humane act is despairing. In the words of one sociopathic door gunner, “Ain’t war hell?”