The Stanley Kubrick Website (unofficial website)
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Seven years later, Kubrick made his next film, Full Metal Jacket (1987), an adaptation of Gustav Hasford's Vietnam War novel The Short-Timers. It was filmed in a derelict gasworks in the London Docklands area that was adapted as a ruined-city set, which makes the film visually very different from other Vietnam War films. Instead of a tropical jungle, the second half of the picture depicts urban warfare. Reviewers and commentators thought this contributed to the bleakness and seriousness of the film.[85] According to author Michel Ciment, the film contained some of Kubrick's trademark characteristics, such as his selection of ironic music, portrayals of men being dehumanized, and attention to extreme detail to achieve realism. At the beginning of the film, as new and expressionless recruits have their hair cut down to their scalp, the song "Goodbye Sweetheart, Hello Vietnam" is playing in the background; in a later scene where United States Marines patrol the ruins of an abandoned and totally destroyed city, the theme song to the Mickey Mouse Club is heard as a sardonic counterpoint. The film is split into halves. The recruits in boot camp are also subjected to what Ciment calls "a form of lobotomy, a barrage of physical and verbal aggression". Ciment writes, "In the transition from man to weapon, Kubrick underlines the process of dehumanization ... the same contradiction between the mechanical and the living that is manifest in A Clockwork Orange." According to one review, notes co-star Matthew Modine, "The first half of FMJ is brilliant. Then the film degenerates into a masterpiece." Ciment also recognizes aspects of this war film with Paths of Glory, which Kubrick directed thirty years earlier. There are similarities in both films, such as the use of natural lighting, an off-screen narrator, attention to detail, a sense of chaos, and the exploration of panoramic spaces. As a result, both films "accentuate the impression of reality ... and photographic hyper-realism". Kubrick explained he made the film look realistic by using natural light, and achieved a "newsreel effect" by making the Steadicam shots less steady.
Quick facts
Directed by Stanley Kubrick Produced by Stanley Kubrick Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick. Michael Herr and Gustav Hasford Based on The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford Starring Matthew Modine Adam Baldwin Vincent D'Onofrio Lee Ermey Dorian Harewood Music by Abigail Mead Cinematography Douglas Milsome Edited by Martin Hunter Production companies Natant Harrier Films Distributed by Warner Bros. (United States) Columbia-Cannon-Warner (United Kingdom) Release dates June 17, 1987
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Seven years later, Kubrick made his next film, Full Metal Jacket (1987), an adaptation of Gustav Hasford's Vietnam War novel The Short-Timers. It was filmed in a derelict gasworks in the London Docklands area that was adapted as a ruined-city set, which makes the film visually very different from other Vietnam War films. Instead of a tropical jungle, the second half of the picture depicts urban warfare. Reviewers and commentators thought this contributed to the bleakness and seriousness of the film.[85] According to author Michel Ciment, the film contained some of Kubrick's trademark characteristics, such as his selection of ironic music, portrayals of men being dehumanized, and attention to extreme detail to achieve realism. At the beginning of the film, as new and expressionless recruits have their hair cut down to their scalp, the song "Goodbye Sweetheart, Hello Vietnam" is playing in the background; in a later scene where United States Marines patrol the ruins of an abandoned and totally destroyed city, the theme song to the Mickey Mouse Club is heard as a sardonic counterpoint. The film is split into halves. The recruits in boot camp are also subjected to what Ciment calls "a form of lobotomy, a barrage of physical and verbal aggression". Ciment writes, "In the transition from man to weapon, Kubrick underlines the process of dehumanization ... the same contradiction between the mechanical and the living that is manifest in A Clockwork Orange." According to one review, notes co-star Matthew Modine, "The first half of FMJ is brilliant. Then the film degenerates into a masterpiece." Ciment also recognizes aspects of this war film with Paths of Glory, which Kubrick directed thirty years earlier. There are similarities in both films, such as the use of natural lighting, an off-screen narrator, attention to detail, a sense of chaos, and the exploration of panoramic spaces. As a result, both films "accentuate the impression of reality ... and photographic hyper-realism". Kubrick explained he made the film look realistic by using natural light, and achieved a "newsreel effect" by making the Steadicam shots less steady.
Quick facts
Directed by Stanley Kubrick Produced by Stanley Kubrick Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick. Michael Herr and Gustav Hasford Based on The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford Starring Matthew Modine Adam Baldwin Vincent D'Onofrio Lee Ermey Dorian Harewood Music by Abigail Mead Cinematography Douglas Milsome Edited by Martin Hunter Production companies Natant Harrier Films Distributed by Warner Bros. (United States) Columbia-Cannon-Warner (United Kingdom) Release dates June 17, 1987
