Stanley Kubrick....!?!?
SUPER TALENTED!!!
But boy did he need someone who could tell him to SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!!!
Yes boss, SUPER GEEKERY is truly admirable and a very good use of the word genius, but it can't half get indulgent and/or irrelevant...
That's not the problem with Full Metal Jacket though or maybe it is...?
Well....
More or less the first hour of Full Metal Jacket is BRILLIANT!!!
The portrait of the BRAINWASHING (and that's what it is) that goes into making an army function is spectacular! The illustration of how innocence is corrupted, how nice young boys are turned into demented platoons of FRED WESTS, who much like Fred come round to thinking killing is normal, fine and in the interests of humanity is stunningly accurate and well done...
A FUCKING TRIUMPH!!!
The second half is however
DUFF!!!
Yes boss, as soon as Private Pyles eyes start going all GHOULISH, the film is over. In fact ideally it should finish just before then, because there's no need for his eyes to go ghoulish, WE KNOW HE'S GONNA GO SCHIZO AND KILL THAT LOVEABLE SHITHEAD!!!
Yes boss, having portrayed subtlety brilliantly, we suddenly have his conversion to madness SPELT OUT!!!
No need...
I'd have him continue to be naive and on the end of the boot, AND SUFFERING, but still smiley and unperturbed in other moments...
and then have him casually shoot Hartman in a clean and blank way before returning to polishing his shoes.
As if it's simply business...!)
No boss, madness isn't really about rolling eyes and demented stares. But then maybe that would make Private Pyle the marines best EVER recruit, a calm and calculated killer - rather than the catastrophic failure he is???
The other thing that stinks with the second half for me is the set.
Yes boss, it's FUCKING TERRIBLE!!! Palm trees are placed with all the imagination of Vietnam being a Jamaican beach. Small obviously fake fires are dotted about like there's small obvious fake fires dotted about!?!? It makes no sense to me at all. The air is wrong, the skies are wrong, the humidity is wrong, wrong, wrong....
Reading wikipedia I learn that the set was in fact carefully crafted based on photos of the relevant area of Vietnam? But to me, it looks like the kind of warzone a child would draw up. It never convinces me it's filmed in Vietnam or a realistic warzone for one minute...
Which it wasn't.
And that's the other thing that REALLY annoys me about the set is that I know it was filmed at the Old Gas Works in Beckton, East London.
Yes boss, after the film was shot, that gas works was cleaned up and turned into an out of town style set of warehouse shops. I go there regularly and every time I do, as well as every time I watch the film, I'm not enjoying the film or even my shopping experience, I'm wondering where in the fuck Poundland is in relation to that bombed out building?
What about Sports Direct? Is it built on top of that unconvincing palm tree?
Tescos!??! To the left of that flamey fire...?
Pizza Hut....?
WHAT ABOUT B & FUCKING Q!??!!?
So there we go....
Still doubtlessly a remarkable and genius film and state propoganda maker, with his EYES WIDE OPEN, but I'm afraid I feel there's only half a good film here...
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