Yes, why I am quite fine thank you, no you too? Really?
Enough small talk, it has indeed been too long since my last post, but I think this time we will just skip the pleasantries. At some point last week I found myself with a lingering fetish for some Stanley Kubrick (we've all had that right?), I was flicking through my library, I eventually found the 'Great' for Kubrick section and then I had quite the dilemma, which film? How do you decide which Kubrick film to watch, Lolita is pretty ground breaking in terms of story, A Clock Work Orange has one of cinemas best characters, 2001: A Space Odyssey is...well its the greatest odyssey of cinematic artistry ever created, then there is Full Metal Jacket, a war movie, but with a distinct lack of all out war.
This ladies and gentleman is why I chose FMJ, because its a war movie, with a distinct lack of war. I could go into what the film is about and why it is an example of cinematic greatness but if you are reading this then you should already know and if you don't, then get your pathetic little maggot ass back to your Mommas house and go watch the film! Where was I? War. Most war films that we see today feature a lot of heavy battle scenes, huge explosions, and Michael Bay holding a small nuclear device with a manic look on his face. FMJ really breaks the mold in that it moves away from the traditional long shot of 100000000 tanks sweeping across France...its always France. We open in a military boot camp in the US , but instead of shipping our heroes out to experience 'the horror, oh the horror' of war that too often features as a secondary theme in most past and present war films, we get real men fighting as soldiers in a horrific series of events, the Vietnam war.
Kubrick can only be applauded for his bravery in brutally conveying the real horror of war, and that horror is that men become soldiers, and those soldiers too often lose the qualities that anchor them as men. Despite being so established and applauded, I struggle to think of few decent contemporary war films that confront this human toll of conflict and do not also feature an over arching hero complex, that dominates the film. Today we expect our war films to play a game of Call of Duty. In a society that preaches peace why is it that audiences actually want P.O.V camera shots that emphasise the blood splatter of a marine killing a generic terrorist. Why is it our taste in cinema swings between the most PG big budget blockbusters and vile homicidal fantasy. Why is it that mainstream film has evolved or should I say devolved to become completely and utterly emotionless and disconnected from eyes to screen?
FMJ is the film it is because I believe Kubrick purposely creates a brutal and emotionless atmosphere that takes characters, men with personalities and turns them into nothing more than mindless instruments of destruction inside the barrel of a gun. Guns only have one purpose. What is more FMJ not only provides a legitimate philosophical insight into the morality of war but also the morality and ethics of cinema: without emotion and without feeling we become nothing more than mindless zombies. This is my popcorn, there is much like it, but this is mine.
Long live the post-empire...
