Full Metal Jacket, A Review

If you've ever seen this movie, you probably thought a lot like I used to about it. A dark war movie by Kubrick, nice to look at but that's as far as it goes.

What made me sit up and take notice was a scene I just couldn't understand, one I'd seen a thousand times before but never as a nearly 20 year old with a successful blog full of interesting bits.

Q: Why the fuck are you wearing a peace badge but have born to kill written on your helmet?
A: I'd like to think I was trying to say something about the dualism of man.

You can see it emblazoned upon the cover and posters for the movie.

I liked the feel of that on my tongue, and I had no idea what the hell dualism was. Alright, perhaps that's a lie, but we'll cover that in a moment. Wikipedia made the relevation clearer for me.

In the west, dualism is good versus evil, the hero versus the villian: clearcut positions on utter righteousness. The entire concept of the American soldier is of one who fights the good fight and dies to a noble and just cause.

In the east, dualism is something different. It's still two sides, opposed to each other, but it's further abstract. It's the difference between a tree and everything else, or two sides of whom neither is more right than the other.

So what is our simple journalist trying to say to us throughout the entire movie?

My eyes were literally wide with the implications here. Constantly we see good people doing bad things.

• "Gomer Pile" driven to insanity by the abuse of his peers and his instructors, who executes his master sgt on the night of graduation from bootcamp.
• The barstardisation of "Gomer Pile" for his stupidity, something which he cannot understand.
• The faux coating to reality and the attitude of never happen to me of the stars and stripes officer, instructing our journalist to lie if need be about what actually happened prior to the Tet Offensive.
• The displays of respect for their enemy by US GIs, we'll never have someone so honourable to shoot when we rotate back stateside - but at the same time mocking the corpse of an NVA regular.
• The final execution of the VC sniper by Joker, which made me realise what was being said. We see him standing over a dying girl, pistol drawn. Visible is his helmet, "born to kill", and his peace badge. As he works up the nerve to execute her, he must rotate to the left - an action which removes the peace symbol from the field of view.

What do all of these mean? The inhuman struggle to reconcile philosophies through violence? I believe the last point, on which I've reflected the most, best illustrates the struggle of man to follow Tao (the way), and achieve balance and simplicity without replacing it with either one or the other.
Sadly, Joker fails, as the will to take a life wins out over the urge to protect it.

Tao is about finding the simplest path in life and taking it: even inaction is an action, so like water flowing down a hill you can do nothing but follow the greater way. There are many other ways, yet everything is predestined. The trick is to not struggle against fate and try to shape destiny, but rather relax and let it carry you. Choosing your path is about choosing the method of least struggle against destiny.
How does Joker find his Tao? By accepting he can do nothing but fight until the war is over, then go home - the mickey mouse routine of the army.

The other beautiful simplicity in this movie that I became aware of: this was an war of ideology. It may have started as a means to stop communism and free the people, but that's not what it truely was. It was a war of duality: The western concept of Good Capitalists (inside every vietnamese is an american just waiting to get out) versus Evil Communists pitted against the eastern dualism of balance through conflict.
The US lost vietnam. Balance with no bias towards one or the other won out. Yet we saw with Joker's struggle to come to grips with his dualistic nature that he was in his way a tiny drop of white in a sea of black - yin-yang.

Have a further read of wikipedia on the subject and see if you can't find things I've missed.