Stanley Kubrick 5 Reasons Why Full Metal Jacket Is His Best War Movie (& 5 Why Paths Of Glory Is A Close Second)

Stanley Kubrick: 5 Reasons Why Full Metal Jacket Is His Best War Movie (& 5 Why Paths Of Glory Is A Close Second)

While Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket is an undeniable war masterpiece, his early feature Paths of Glory is a gem that shouldn’t be overlooked.

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War is one of the few genres that Kubrick tackled more than once. He nailed horror in one go, but warfare is a subject matter he kept returning to. With its wicked sense of humor, its pitch-perfect structure (taking the characters through boot camp in the first half and then shipping them off to war following a traumatizing midpoint twist for the second half), and its awesome soundtrack full of pop hits, Kubrick’s haunting Vietnam satire Full Metal Jacket is, without question, the director’s greatest war movie.

But with its anti-war sentiment and riveting lead performance by Kirk Douglas, Paths of Glory, one of the iconic filmmaker’s earliest efforts, is a close second.

10 Full Metal Jacket: It Has Kubrick’s Darkly Comic Wit

Dark comedy can be found all over the Kubrick oeuvre, whether it’s in overtly satirical movies like Lolita and Dr. Strangelove or in Jack Nicholson’s over-the-top line delivery in The Shining or an impromptu performance of “Singin’ in the Rain” during an assault in A Clockwork Orange.

Full Metal Jacket has the pitch-black comic wit that makes Kubrick’s work so much twisted fun all over it. The most obvious example is the juxtaposition of upbeat songs like “Surfin’ Bird” against the horrors of the Vietnam War.

9 Paths Of Glory: It Has An Anti-War Message

Often, anti-war films can come off as preachy. Or worse yet, they can come off as pro-war films disguising themselves as anti-war films, an accusation commonly faced by Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down. But Paths of Glory carries a genuine anti-war sentiment, reflecting Kubrick’s own thoughts on war.

The fact that Dax’s fate and the fate of his men rests on the siege of a place called Ant Hill makes the conflict seem insignificant, or even pointless. It’s one of the many ways that Kubrick uses this story to put the huge concept of war into perspective.

8 Full Metal Jacket: It Puts The Audience In The Characters’ Shoes

In the opening scene of Full Metal Jacket, the recruits have their heads shaved and get fitted with uniforms so that they all look the same and any sense of individuality fades away. The viewer follows these recruits, especially Joker (the only one who maintains some individuality as the movie progresses), through their basic training and eventually into a warzone, where they face insurmountable odds and they’re forced to make incredibly tough decisions.

The battle scenes are shot entirely from the U.S. Marines’ perspective. If they can’t see the enemy, neither can we. The movie puts the audience right in the characters’ shoes.

7 Paths Of Glory: The Dialogue Is As Riveting As The Battles

The main expectation of a war movie is a couple of battle scenes. Even battle scenes that don’t try to glorify combat can be breathtaking, as they can put viewers in a position that most of them can only imagine.

In Paths of Glory, there are plenty of riveting battle sequences. But the dialogue-heavy scenes, particularly Dax’s court martial, are just as riveting.

6 Full Metal Jacket: It Captures The Intensity Of Warfare

The first half of Full Metal Jacket gets a lot more discussion than the second half, because R. Lee Ermey makes the former more entertaining. But the latter does a terrific job of capturing the intensity of warfare.

This is partly a result of cinematographer Douglas Milsome experimenting with throwing the camera’s shutter off sync for the battle scenes, creating a disorienting warzone environment.

5 Paths Of Glory: Kirk Douglas Is Compelling As Colonel Dax

The late, great Kirk Douglas gives one of his all-time greatest performances in the lead role of Colonel Dax in Paths of Glory, as he refuses an order from his commanding officer and has to defend his decision in a court martial.

Paths of Glory is the kind of movie that rests on its lead actor’s shoulders and Douglas is more than capable of carrying the weight.

4 Full Metal Jacket: The Cast Is Phenomenal

Matthew Modine captures the essence of human suffering in the role of Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket. Vincent D’Onofrio brings a relatable insecurity to Private Pyle, culminating in a harrowing suicide scene casting a shadow over the rest of the movie.

And of course, R. Lee Ermey steals the show with an improv-heavy performance drawing on his own history as a drill sergeant to bring Gunnery Sergeant Hartman to life.

3 Paths Of Glory: It’s A Story Of An Institution Versus An Individual

David Simon has said that Paths of Glory was a huge influence on his HBO crime drama The Wire, arguably the greatest TV series ever made (in the top three at the very least), in its depiction of the roadblocks put up by “middle management.”

Paths of Glory is a story about an individual taking on an institution, as Dax tries to justify a deeply human decision he made within the gray area of a black-and-white set of rules.

2 Full Metal Jacket: Joker Not Dying Is A Truly Tragic Ending

At the end of the original script of Full Metal Jacket, Private Joker was going to be killed. However, Matthew Modine convinced Kubrick to let his character survive, because after everything Joker has seen and experienced, living with those memories would be worse than dying.

Joker dying at the end would’ve been a sad ending, but surviving is truly tragic, because that’s the true horror of war.

1 Paths Of Glory: “The Faithful Hussar” Scene Touches On What It Means To Be Human

In Paths of Glory’s final scene, a young female German prisoner (played by Kubrick’s then-future wife Christiane Kubrick) is forced to sing to a bar full of drunk, rowdy, cynical French soldiers. She sings the German folk song “The Faithful Hussar.”

Initially, the soldiers make fun of her, but as the song goes on, she gets through to them and a lot of them even end up shedding a tear. This scene captures something indescribably beautiful, touching on what it means to be human.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/stanley-kubrick-full-metal-jacket-best-war-movie-paths-glory-close-second/

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