Full Metal Jacket (1987) is clearly divided into two very different parts—the first dealing with basic training at Parris Island, and the second concerning the war in Vietnam—and each part ends with a killing. At Parris Island, the drill instructor, Sergeant Hartman (Lee Ermey), berates and debases his new recruits in a most inhuman way, attempting to strip them of their individuality in order to turn them into effective killing machines. One of the recruits, Leonard Lawrence (Vincent D’Onofrio), nicknamed Private Pyle, is overweight and of questionable mental ability and so has difficulty following the sergeant’s orders and meeting the demands of Marine Corps training. After the sergeant begins to punish the other recruits for Leonard’s mistakes, in order to motivate him (or, perhaps better, to take revenge), they beat him savagely. After the beating, Leonard goes insane; he shoots and kills the sergeant and then kills himself on the last night of training.
Private Joker (Matthew Modine) provides a robot-like voice-over during the first half of the film, and he becomes the protagonist of the second half, which is composed of a series of vignettes of chaotic events in Vietnam. Joker is a combat correspondent for Stars and Stripes magazine and is ultimately attached to a fighting unit that includes one of his friends from Parris Island, Cowboy (Arliss Howard). The unit comes under fire from a sniper as the men—including Cowboy—are killed one by one. They finally track down the sniper—a young woman—who is seriously wounded in the confrontation. As she lies dying, she begs to be put out of her misery. The other marines are content to let her suffer, but Joker objects and finally shoots her to death.
One of the important themes of the film, which underlies the stark difference between the two halves, is that of chaos and order. For example, in stripping the men of their differences and individuality, by dressing them the same and shaving their heads, the Marine Corps is attempting to impose order and authority on the recruits. This order is reflected in the perfect files of soldiers and the neat rows of cots and toilets in the barracks. In his inability to adapt to that order, Leonard reflects the folly of the entire enterprise, and his murder of the sergeant and subsequent suicide are the shocking consequences of that enterprise. The murder-suicide then unleashes the savagery and chaos of the second half of the film.
I argue in this essay that Kubrick is showing us the chaotic nature of the world—one that resists the imposition of order—and the ambiguous nature of morality in such a world. That is to say, in the chaotic flux that is reality, morality is not nearly as black and white, or as absolute, as “thou shalt not kill.” Not all killings are alike. These concerns about morality, and the metaphysical assumptions about the chaotic nature of reality underpinning them, are main currents in Nietzsche’s thought. It is not surprising, then, that these themes run through the film, given the strong influence Nietzsche had on Kubrick’s work. Consequently, I begin with a discussion of Nietzsche’s flux metaphysics and its role in Full Metal Jacket.
(Helaas niets over dat tempoverschil)
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