Full Metal Jacket is to the war movie genre what The Shining is to the horror film genre: an anomaly of an unique and twisted perspective that could only have been delivered by the genius mind of Stanley Kubrick. With its fascinatingly bifurcated narrative, Full Metal Jacket differentiates itself from the myriad of other Vietnam-focused war films in that it really isn't about "Vietnam" at all, but is instead about the people who were made to experience the war. Like Scorsese's Taxi Driver, the film is a psychological character study that unapologetically takes the perspective of its characters, whether or not your moral sensibilities can handle it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMapjaoxU0M The film ends with the surrealist juxtaposition of soldiers marching, silhouetted by the burning heap of Vietnam behind them, in unison to the chants of the theme song from the Mickey Mouse Club. It's a characteristically perverse slice of humanity for a Kubrick film, but as powerful as this scene is, the cut to a black screen accompanied by the opening sitar riff of The Rolling Stones' Paint It Black increases the effect of the finale tenfold. The song's dark subject matter and pessimistic outlook is befitting of the tone of Full Metal Jacket, but what really makes the song work, both in the context of the film and as a song itself, is the fact it's not overly languid. Despite the bleak lyrics, the song has a driving beat that when combined with the Eastern mysticism of the prominently featured sitar, results in an unrelentingly visceral, yet refreshingly abstruse, sound. In other words, it's the perfect ending for a Stanley Kubrick flick.
A film fanatic at a very young age, starting with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies and gradually moving up to more sophisticated fare, at around the age of ten he became inexplicably obsessed with all things Oscar. With the incredibly trivial power of being able to chronologically name every Best Picture winner from memory, his lifelong goal is to see every Oscar nominated film, in every major category, in the history of the Academy Awards.
