MY MOVIE SHELF: Full Metal Jacket

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 94 Days to go: 62

Movie #346:  Full Metal Jacket

If there’s one Kubrick film I really really like, it’s Full Metal Jacket. Maybe I’m showing my uncultured hand a little bit here, but I like a movie that can be just a movie — a movie with a clear-cut story, a beginning, middle and end. I like a movie that doesn’t need to be interpreted or pondered or dissected and instead can just be consumed — watched and enjoyed and put away, no questions asked. Full Metal Jacket works as that kind of movie. What makes it really great, though, is that it’s also a thoughtful study in contrasts.

When Private Joker (Matthew Modine) is in Vietnam, he wears a peace symbol pin on his jacket. He’s also written “Born to Kill” on his helmet. When asked about this contradiction, he claims to not know why he is sporting both messages, but settles on it being a statement about “the duality of man.” That duality is present throughout the film, and is highlighted again and again. We are not just one thing. We contain multitudes.

From the very beginning, the soldiers are Marine Corps. training are meant to have a single purpose — to be killers. The opening scene, in fact, is shot after shot of different recruits getting their hair shaved off, going from various individuals to identical cogs in a machine. They are not individuals anymore, and yet each one is given a personal nickname by Sargeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey). That’s how Joker got to be Joker, how Cowboy (Arliss Howard) got to be Cowboy, and how Gomer Pyle (Vincent D’Onofrio) got to be Pyle. And even though they are now all part of a single unit (reciting cheerful upbeat lines about death and killing — another duality), they also fit their names. Gomer Pyle, naturally, is the biggest dolt in the squad. He screws everything up, he can’t do anything right. He’s the weakest. But then he also becomes the deadliest.

The contradictions continue from basic training into combat. Private Rafterman (Kevyn Major Howard) even comments on how the war frustrates him because the Americans have supposedly liberated the South Vietnamese, given them their freedom, but the Vietnamese don’t seem to want it. They don’t appreciate it. And Rafterman himself is a jittery little kid, itching to go out in the field, but scared shitless once he gets there. However, in a critical moment, it’s Rafterman who doesn’t hesitate. Just as it’s Joker who is the most serious, the most respectful, when a wounded Vietnamese sniper is lying before them begging for death. He’s not just one thing.

Even minor characters are given the chance to be more than a single character trait. For instance, Animal Mother (Adam Baldwin) is the fiercest, most gung-ho soldier out there — a seeming Neanderthal. And yet his helmet reads “Now I am become death,” a line from Hindu scripture. He has depth as well as single-mindedness, thoughtfulness as well as brutality.

Even the movie itself is a contradiction of sorts. It’s a serious film with a very heavy subject matter, and yet the tone is light and often comic. War is hell, after all, but even the most embattled soldiers are entitled to a little sucky-sucky once in a while. They love you long time.

 

MY MOVIE SHELF: Men in Black

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 198  Days to go: 203

Movie #179:  Men in Black

Funny story: This movie was mis-alphabetized on my shelf because its spine says MIB, so now I’m going to be upset forever that my entire project is screwed up, like having a freakin’ bubble caught in your phone’s screen protector. Goddamn bubble. At least I don’t own the other two, or I’d have been super irked by this. I mean, more than I am already.

And now you know exactly how neurotic I am.

Men in Black was maybe the first movie that made me realized I didn’t mind alien sci-fi if it was funny and clever alien sci-fi. I am hugely anti-Independence Day, so Men in Black was the first movie of Will Smith’s (as Agent J) I could really get behind. And it’s such a great movie. Secret government agencies are not a new theme, and neither are aliens living among us or alien invaders threatening to destroy Earth, but Men in Black makes those well-worn paths seem new and fresh. The agency, their weird egg-shaped chairs, the firefight test where J shoots little Suzy with the Quantum Physics books, the various aliens and all the gadgets — especially the neuralizer — come together to make the film interesting and fun and different from anything done before.

Will Smith is great the whole way through, but the absolute best part is in his introductory scene when he’s chasing down the alien through the streets of New York. He’s sharp and witty and funny while also being a bit of a badass. The rest of the time, fumbling through a new world, he exhibits more of a goofiness mixed with his natural swagger, but the beginning is all confidence. It’s great.

As for MIB proper, Rip Torn (as Agent Zed) runs the agency with a gravelly voiced monotone that drips arrogance and authority. He’s a lot of fun. And nobody does cantankerous straight arrow like Tommy Lee Jones, though here he gets to use his niche to a decidedly comic effect and it works great.

Linda Fiorentino makes for a somewhat stilted and off medical examiner, I think, but that might be all the flashy things she’s gotten over the years. And no lie, Vincent D’Onofrio’s Edgar suit was the creepiest, grossest, scariest thing I’d ever seen up to that point. Blech.

Tony Shalhoub as Jeebs is another highlight, and his head getting blown off was one of my favorite surprises in the film. It’s even better when he regenerates and his eyes are crossed in new ways. All of the featured aliens, in fact, are clever and unique, each different and unusual in their own ways.

As much as I enjoy Men in Black, though, the thing that secures it deep within my heart it the final image. As J and L (Fiorentino) drive off through the city, the camera pulls back to an aerial view of the city, of the earth, of the solar system, of the galaxy, all fitting within a marble currently being played with by an alien in some other world, who places our galaxy marble into a bag full of other galaxy marbles. It’s a flight of fancy, and yet it’s not entirely implausible. Our world — our entire universe — could’ve been created inside the dense center of a black hole which exists in another, larger universe. This is actually a thing. And this flight of fancy speaks to that, to the incomprehensible vastness of the universe, to the unheard of possibilities that lie beyond the limits of our knowledge of space.

How freaking great is that to be touched on by a silly little popcorn movie? It’s seriously so great. The others are fine little follow-ups (and I do hold a special place in my heart for the third movie, even though I don’t own it, because it deals with time and changing history and alternate timelines), but the first is simply incomparable.