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When I teach my film classes, I find that Kubrick (along with Hitchcock) is one of the most misunderstood filmmakers of the last century. Why is an essential component of this filmmaker (as well as others) lost in the translation? Part of it seems to be the separation between film history/criticism in the United States, where film enthusiasts seem content with the film alone, and forget that, prior to the internet, movies existed within a network of criticism that extended from the Westcoast Studios to the Eastcoast critics, and stretched overseas, where brilliant essayists like Truffaut were able to pick apart the latest offerings in the pages of the Cahiers du Cinema. These filmmakers used the theater as an extension of a critical dialogue that helped explain their core philosophies; the New york Critics and European Essayists were really cinematic linguists who helped to make sense of the "linguistic" complexity of a medium whose essential grammar seems to be more or less intuitive, both concrete and abstract.
The transition to more escapist fare (at least in the late 70s studio Hollywood system) has meant a transition in the critical world as well; with the popularity of the Cinematic Essayist waning in the last 20 years, being instead replaced by schtick and the "every man" approach to film reviews, and a cruel thumbs-up, thumbs-down approach -- more or less a symptom of our collective attention deficit. While these approaches are necessary, the lack of educated "cinematic linguists" is resulting in the loss of understanding when it comes to our most important filmmakers, of which Kubrick is undoubtedly one.
For instance, it surprises most people to know that one of our most important stylists considered himself to be an "objective director." Kubrick's minimalist, nuanced, distanced style is really the product of his core philosophy which was to "observe" rather than to "impart." Kubrick aligned himself with documentarians who used aesthetic restraint in crafting ethnographic narratives. In fact, if you really study the man -- his writings, his interviews -- you will find that his entire career was really a quest for cinematic truth. He constantly struggled against his own interpretation and impressions of events, to try to give a multi-faceted view of reality and drama, of which he believed that narrative itself was really an unnatural hallucination imposed on a series of random events by the mind's need to rationalize and organize.
Kubrick struggled against not only studio narrative -- the classic three-act structure -- which he found predictable and as pedestrian as an overly familiar nursery rhyme; but he also resisted the narrative of the mind, its need to simplify, reduce, and impose. Even more than that, Kubrick struggled against the medium itself.
In an interview, Kubrick opined about the need to import rocks onto the set of Full Metal Jacket, to acquire the realism he knew would be beyond his reach with simulation. Sounding a lot like Jorge Luis Borges speaking about the problems of a truly realistic map, he explained the natural processes that would go into the formation of those rocks, with which Hollywood verisimilitude just could not compete. Importing those rocks is proof of Kubrick's devotion to objectivity, which he felt was constantly compromised and corrupted by the cinematic medium itself (never mind that those rocks existed on a fabricated sound stage in London -- but Kubrick's philosophy on realism/formalism was always filled with contradictions).
It's interesting to note that critical interpretation of Stanley Kubrick largely fails because it excludes the man's own take on his own material. Never being one to shut down another's opinion, Kubrick nevertheless had very strong and opinionated feelings about his own films, opinions that seem incredibly out-of-step with popular interpretation of his work.
I would like to remind the reader (whoever has been kind enough to stay with me thus far), an obvious fact, that will seem more obvious in retrospect -- Kubrick had a lifelong fascination with the propagandistic nature of cinema as well as the theme of social brainwashing. A better word for brainwashing is "conditioning" as it's broader and encompasses what Kubrick felt was the most consistent theme running throughout the entirety of his work. Kubrick was obsessed with how man's psyche could be conditioned -- through media, through government, through aristocracy, through peer pressure, etc. And in the end, he was fascinated by the struggle between an individual's innate nature and the outside, coercive forces that threatened to eliminate his nature or suppress it once and for all.
"Full Metal Jacket" has the observationalist impulse of a documentary, the lyric quality of silent cinema, the rigorous technical prowess of Max Ophuls, and the elliptical, bifurcated narrative of an art house movie. In light of these influences, "Full Metal Jacket" is less an unconventional, frustrating war movie, than a logical realization of Kubrick's core aesthetic principles as applied to the Viet Nam conflict. That being the case, what unites the two "halves" of Full Metal Jacket is the theme of "social conditioning." A soldier is like a full metal jacket -- his outer shell is formed by a rigid, brutalizing, indifferent, nearly industrial process, and yet, somewhere beneath is the soft material that can prove pliant and powerful in the wrong hands. Viewed from this perspective, the second half of "Full Metal Jacket" is not as off-putting as some have unfairly suggested. For those who are intimately familiar with the man's philosophies, the "second half" is a natural consequence of the first half, and succeeds brilliantly in emphasizing Kubrick's fascination with man's duality -- a duality that becomes more apparent in a sustained and prolonged conflict between two national dualities.
(If you really want insight into the work of Kubrick or other filmmakers, do not divorce them from their influences, or their own philosophies which exist in interviews, private notes, and other secondary and third sources).
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From the manufacturer
Stanley Kubrick’s singular war saga packs a more visceral punch in 4K. Matthew Modine, Vincent D’Onofrio and R. Lee Ermey – as a drill instructor from hell – shine in this gripping chronicle of U.S. Marine recruits during the Vietnam War.
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Matthew Modine (Pvt. Joker) |
Adam Baldwin (Animal Mother) |
Vincent D’Onofrio (Pvt. Leonard “Gomer” Pyle) |
Lee Ermey (Gunnery Sgt. Hartman/Technical Advisor) |
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Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2011
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Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2024
Arrived on time and is as advertised. Arrived in damaged case.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2023
Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2024
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SHEPPY
Do not piss off the Drill Instructor- “Yes Sir”
Reviewed in Canada on September 29, 2024
Maria
El clásico de Kubrick por fin restaurado en 4K Ultra HD!
Reviewed in Mexico on August 17, 2024
Maria
Reviewed in Mexico on August 17, 2024
Se ve espectacular, mejor que nunca, con una calidad de imagen fuera de serie.
Llegó rápido y en perfectas condiciones, y la encontré en oferta por el Prime Day 2024!
El único inconveniente es que no trae el Slipcover de colección.
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