Blog 5- AV

The movie Full Metal Jacket by Stanley Kubrick is broken up into three parts. Individually each part tells an important piece of the war and the process that soldiers went through. When combined together, the three parts show what soldiers went through from the very beginning.

The first part of the movie is when all of the soldiers are in training and preparing for war. I thought this part was the most interesting and most important when looking at the whole Vietnam War and soldiers went in and how they came out of the war. In this part the audience is able to see how the drill instructor was trying to prepare the soldiers for war. We see the drill instructor treating them horribly because he wants them to lose all emotion and have no feeling for anything. One thing that I found interesting was how the drill instructor was telling everyone that they were killers, and they must kill everything they see. These soldiers knew nothing else when they went to war, killing was their only priority. This explains why many soldiers, when they come back from war they look like animals to us, and have no feelings. That’s what training taught them, and for many years that all they did.

The second part of the film shows what people, like reporters, who were not in the front line fighting for their lives, were doing. In this part we can see the other part of war that we’re not used to, the part where people are not shooting until their base was attacked. One thing I found interesting was when Joker, one of the reporters, was talking about how he wanted to experience being in the front line and fighting and that he was ready for it. However, when their base was attacked, and they all grabbed their guns to defend themselves, Joker said that he wasn’t ready for this. This just shows that the soldiers never really knew what they would they be facing when they got to war, until they were actually in the front line, fighting for their lives.

The last of the movie is when we really see what war is really like. This part shows us what we are used to when we think of war, people shooting at the enemy and many dying. In this part we also see how the reporter, Joker, who has never been in the front line fighting, hesitates when he is faced with whether or not to kill the young girl who just killed his three good friends. All the other soldiers are teling him that they don’t care and will shoot her in a heartbeat, but Joker can’t. He finally does, but this just shows how even though they all went through training, people who didn’t fight in the front line, still have emotions, however the soldiers who were used to it, don’t even think twice because they don’t feel anything.

The last few minutes of the movie, we see all the soldiers singing the Mickey Mouse song. I think this scene is put in the movie to show that these soldiers were young and they were forced to kill on a daily basis, and not have any emotion towards it. I think it might also show that they are still young, even though they are trying to be taught and grown up.