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Stanley Kubrick: Full Metal Jacket
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It is this logical yet lateral approach to his projects that many fans of the auteur theory find themselves drawn to in Kubrick's films. The symmetry of his camera framing, the symmetry of characters (or indeed objects) as they interact within the frame, scripts constructed on parallel patterns which themselves invoke chess games. An order and balance which connects formally with the spaceships movements in 2001 or the programmed responses of the young soldiers in Paths of Glory orFull Metal Jacket . Yet there is always a clinical feel that would not be out of place in David Cronenberg's films. Michael Herr, who co-wrote the screenplay for Full Metal Jacket (1987) complained that he couldn't understand how a script that was so emotive on paper could have such an emotionally detached effect on an audience when transferred verbatim on to the screen. Alexander Walker, talking about the criminals in The Killing (1958) describes them as being "as human as Huston's but he (Kubrick) stays detached, cynical. Like a psychologist supervising a devilishly constructed maze, he knows it does not pay to get too fond of the rats."
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Full Metal Jacket was Kubrick's next film and was released in 1987. It was one of several films that were made in the 1980s that were about the Vietnam War. The film was most famous for its drill instructor character, played by R. Lee Ermey, who was very cruel to his soldiers. After the film was released, the United States Armed Forces changed some of its rules about how their drill instructors should behave.
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From there, check out Full Metal Jacket - Between Good And Evil (30:46) which finds Baldwin, D'Onofrio, Ermey and Modine joined by Kubrick biographers John Baxter and David Hughes in front of the camera. The actors all relay their experiences on set while the biographers detail the production history and make some interesting comparisons to some of Kubrick's other work. This makes for an good mix of critical analysis, trivia and film history and as such it's a pretty enjoyable look at the film.
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