Full Metal Jacket (film)
"Full Metal Jacket" is a 1987 film directed by Stanley Kubrick, known for its unflinching portrayal of the Vietnam War. The film is based on Gustav Hasford's novel "The Short-Timers" and intricately depicts the experiences of U.S. Marines, beginning with their dehumanizing training at a boot camp on Parris Island, South Carolina, and culminating in the chaotic combat during the Tet Offensive. Kubrick employs a stark realism to illustrate the transformation of recruits into soldiers, highlighting the psychological toll of military training and warfare. The film's narrative contrasts the brutality of basic training with the horrors of combat, suggesting that both environments are fundamentally damaging. With its memorable characters and striking imagery, "Full Metal Jacket" explores the madness of war, often juxtaposing violence with ironic moments, such as soldiers marching away from battle while singing a children's theme song. The film has had a lasting impact on the genre, influencing how subsequent films address the complexities of war and military service. Through its examination of diverse political perspectives, Kubrick's work offers a deeply personal meditation on the nature of conflict and its effects on individuals and society.
Full Metal Jacket (film)
Identification Vietnam War film
Director Stanley Kubrick
Date Released June 26, 1987
Touted by some as “the best war movie ever,” Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket stirred critics and war veterans alike. Its violent realism, loose narrative structure, and vision of madness in war changed film-viewing audiences long after the 1980’s.
Key Figures
Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999), film director
The United States became involved in the conflict in Vietnam in 1955. In 1963, U.S. military advisers in the country numbered 16,000; by 1966, more than 200,000 U.S. soldiers were stationed there. The Communist Tet Offensive early in 1968, portrayed in Full Metal Jacket (1987), signaled the end of U.S. strength and resolve in the region. The final troops withdrew in March, 1973. The nation continued to process its experience of the war long after it ended. Books and essays provided history, cultural analysis, and societal introspection of the conflict. A spate of films—realistic, surrealistic, fictional—appeared in the late 1970’s, only five years after the end of the war.
Stanley Kubrick had already made what for many was the definitive World War I film, Paths of Glory (1957), when he chose to make another film portraying the war in Vietnam. He decided to base his film on a war novel, The Short-Timers (1979), by Gustav Hasford. This work had not received much public mention, yet it impressed the director. For years, he worked on a screenplay with the author, along with the publicly recognized veteran journalist Michael Herr. The relationship between these men shaped Kubrick’s vision of what a war movie should be. This vision involved a rigorous realism, as Kubrick portrayed a Marine boot camp on Parris Island, South Carolina; the Tet Offensive; and the battle for the city of Hue—the major parts of the film.
The film takes a great part of its meaning from its juxtaposition of basic training with active combat, as it is unclear which is worse. The stock characters—bookish, oafish, macho—become trained killing machines, as their drill instructor (played by R. Lee Ermey) dehumanizes them and strips them of their individuality to prepare them for war. The trainees become incorporated into the squad, the company, and the machinery of war. After an incident of extreme violence at Parris Island, they ship out to Vietnam, where more violence awaits amid the destroyed palm trees, the killing fields, and the ruins of the Holy City of Hue, where a chaotic battle with a sniper marks the second denouement of the film. Kubrick juxtaposes horror with irony to capture the madness of war, and the surviving Marines march away from Hue singing The Mickey Mouse Club theme song.
Impact
As in Paths of Glory, Kubrick’s portrayal of war in Full Metal Jacket emphasized the extent to which soldiers find themselves simultaneously under attack—albeit in very different ways—both by enemy troops and by their own military. By capturing this predicament, he decisively altered the history of war films. Careful to give voice, through onscreen interviews, to a broad spectrum of political viewpoints on Vietnam, he nevertheless crafted those viewpoints into a very personal vision of the nature of war and of military service. As one of society’s most biting critics, profound visionaries, and fierce satirists, Kubrick produced perhaps the most compelling vision of war since Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970).
Bibliography
Bolton, John. “The War Film.” In American Cinema/American Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994.
Gianetti, Louis. Understanding Movies. 10th ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 2004.
Hasford, Gustav. The Short-Timers. New York: Harper, 1979.
Herr, Michael. Dispatches. New York: Knopf, 1977.
Mason, Bobbie Ann. In Country. New York: Harper, 1985.
Melling, Philip H. Vietnam in American Literature. Boston: Twayne, 1990.
O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried . New York: Houghton, 1990.