SusannahThe Deer Hunter VS Full Metal Jacket
August 21st 2011 08:59
The Deer Hunter (1978) versus Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Starring: Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Cazale, John Savage.
Directed by: Michael Cimino.
Starring: Matthew Modine, Vincent D'Onofrio, R. Lee Ermey, Adam Baldwin.
Directed by: Stanley Kubrick.
War movies are one of my least favourite genres. They rank right down there with Coming of Age dramas, and I avoid both if possible. But I have realised that there was a gap in my classic film knowledge: a hole where knowledge of War Movies ought to be, and references made to these classic films in other movies, which I completely failed to get because I had not seen them. So this is how my classic war double-feature has come about: I realised that it was necessary for my filmic education to watch both The Deer Hunter and Full Metal Jacket. So I embraced one of the genres I have historically avoided and sat down to watch two classic films that deal with the effects of the U.S.A's war with Vietnam.
The Deer Hunter and Full Metal Jacket both deal with Vietnam and its de-humanising effects. The Deer Hunter deals with the after-effects of war, and how warfare permanently changes people. It shows how no one can escape war unscathed; even if they are fine on the outside, they are still irrevocably changed on the inside. Full Metal Jacket deals with the build-up to warfare and the change human beings must undergo if they are to become killers. It also shows that no one can remain on the sidelines in warfare. That even if you try and remain outside of the action, as private Joker does, eventually you will be forced to become a participant.
Both films are divided into sections to cover the different aspects of war, as warfare is both an all-encompassing and divisive experience. The Deer Hunter deals with before, during, and after the war for three young men, and their group of friends, in a small industrial town in Pennsylvania. John Savage plays Steven, who, at the start of the film is preparing to marry Angela, and hanging out with his friends, including Michael (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken), and Stan (John Cazale) before the ceremony takes place. The ceremony itself is a full-on Russian Orthodox one. The opening segment takes quite a while to develop and director Cimino indulges in a leisurely pace of direction. However, this does mean that the characters are firmly established in our minds before the middle section of the warfare takes place.
Full Metal Jacket is famously divided into two sections. The boot camp training for the war, and the war zone itself. The boot-camp training sequence only lasts for forty minutes but it is one of the most memorable sequences ever committed to film and has been endlessly parodied elsewhere. New recruits, possibly conscripted, are given two months intensive boot camp training to turn them into killing machines under the tutelage of Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey). His incredibly blacky comic turn as the drill sergeant is one of the most amusing and memorable performances committed to celluloid. The point of the training is to turn the recruits into war machines by dehumanising them as much as possible before they are shipped off to fight in the war. At the same time they are being assessed to see where they will most appropriately be slotted into the war outfit.
Two characters are focussed on in this section, Private Joker (Modine), and Private Pyle (D' Onofrio), both of whom have been rechristened with nicknames to suit the whims of Sergeant Hartman. Private Pyle is a bit slow, and very unfit. He keeps messing up and is blamed for the entire training squad being punished by Sergeant Hartman. The squad give him a humiliating punishment themselves, in which Private Joker participates. To fit in, Pyle internalises the training completely to the extent that by the time it finishes, he is unable to let go, espeically of his rifle, which he now sees as an extension of himself. This leads to a disastrous and deadly conclusion to the first sequence, showing exactly to what extent eroding a man's humanity, and replacing it with only thoughts of killing, can lead to.
The second parts of both Full Metal Jacket and The Deer Hunter take place in Vietnam amidst the fighting. This is where the most famous sequence in The Deer Hunter occurs, that of the Russian roulette game with a gun. John, Michael and Nick have been in Vietnam for a while when this sequence begins, and have been exposed to their share of fighting before they get captured by the Vietcong. They are held captive on a boat, where they witness the Vietnamese taking bets on a roulette game. Prisoners are forced to play in rounds, where each man has to hold a gun to his head, with one live bullet and five empty chambers, and pull the trigger not knowing if he will live or die. Steven is forced to play, but he has accidentally been shot by a previous competitor, and his nerves are gone. Michael is forced to play against Nick, but comes up with a plan, involving putting three bullets into the chambers instead of one, that will help them escape. The plan succeeds, but Nick gets separated from Michael and Steven in the aftermath.
For Full Metal Jacket, Private Joker has been assigned to the journalistic division of the Vietnam corps; lightweight as far as fighting and war action goes. He is writing for a magazine for the troops, and putting a positive spin on the American war effort. However, he wants to write about the real war, not the one he is putting a spin upon. So, along with a photographer, he travels with a platoon to record the action. Private Joker embraces the internal conflict within people both for war and for peace by writing "Born to Kill" on his helmet, and pinning a badge with a peace symbol on it onto his chest. The latter he is told off for wearing by a more senior officer. Although less popular than the training sequence, this part of the film shows that no one can be a witness to war without being affected by it, and, eventually, having to take part, even if it is for humanitarin reasons. It also serves to balance out the first half by showing the result of all the rigorous training put into practice in the war zone. Although less entertaining than the first half, (but it is very hard for anything to top the first forty minutes), it still retains Kubrick's blackly comic tone as the soldiers on duty lark about, and chat up prostitutes, all while their lives are in danger. It ends with a dramatic conclusion and shows there cannot truly be any bystanders in war.
The Deer Hunter goes further by depicting the actual aftermath of war by showing how the soldeirs cope when they have returned. Michael is shown returning from the war first. Although outwardly fine - he has suffered no lasting injuries - he feels a divide between himself and his friends who did not fight in the war. There was always distance between himself and the others, but now he feels an even greater divide. Seeing that the town has learnt of his homecoming and has thrown a party, he cannot bare to attend, and so spends the night in a hotel. The only person to whom he feels a connection is Linda, who was engaged to Nick before he left for the war. Having always been attracted to her, he cannot help but make a move in Nick's continued absence. What had been a favourite pastime for the men is also no more as Michael goes deer hunting and finds that he no longer has the capacity to take innocent life.
He learns that Steven has also returned from the war, but not intact. He bares the physical scars of warfare, having lost his legs and one arm. He is living in a hospital. As Michael adjusts to life, the lingering absence of Nick makes him, and the audience, question what has become of his friend. This leads to the lasting impact of The Deer Hunter as a film as Michael travels back to Vietnam to locate Nick when he discovers that he is still there. Nick, when found, is physically okay, but unlike Steven, all his scars are mental ones. He has not been able to mentally leave the horror he has witnessed in Vietnam, so is physically been unable to leave either. He has survived by doing the one thing he knows how to do, even though he knows what the outcome will ultimately be. This makes him the most tragic figure in the film, and symbolic of the price of war.
Thus both films carry a strongly anti-war message, and show that no one can remain unaffected from the changes it creates, from those left behind, to those who witness it, to those who participate.
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Starring: Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Cazale, John Savage.
Directed by: Michael Cimino.
Starring: Matthew Modine, Vincent D'Onofrio, R. Lee Ermey, Adam Baldwin.
Directed by: Stanley Kubrick.
R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket
War movies are one of my least favourite genres. They rank right down there with Coming of Age dramas, and I avoid both if possible. But I have realised that there was a gap in my classic film knowledge: a hole where knowledge of War Movies ought to be, and references made to these classic films in other movies, which I completely failed to get because I had not seen them. So this is how my classic war double-feature has come about: I realised that it was necessary for my filmic education to watch both The Deer Hunter and Full Metal Jacket. So I embraced one of the genres I have historically avoided and sat down to watch two classic films that deal with the effects of the U.S.A's war with Vietnam.
The Deer Hunter poster
The Deer Hunter and Full Metal Jacket both deal with Vietnam and its de-humanising effects. The Deer Hunter deals with the after-effects of war, and how warfare permanently changes people. It shows how no one can escape war unscathed; even if they are fine on the outside, they are still irrevocably changed on the inside. Full Metal Jacket deals with the build-up to warfare and the change human beings must undergo if they are to become killers. It also shows that no one can remain on the sidelines in warfare. That even if you try and remain outside of the action, as private Joker does, eventually you will be forced to become a participant.
Full Metal Jacket
Both films are divided into sections to cover the different aspects of war, as warfare is both an all-encompassing and divisive experience. The Deer Hunter deals with before, during, and after the war for three young men, and their group of friends, in a small industrial town in Pennsylvania. John Savage plays Steven, who, at the start of the film is preparing to marry Angela, and hanging out with his friends, including Michael (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken), and Stan (John Cazale) before the ceremony takes place. The ceremony itself is a full-on Russian Orthodox one. The opening segment takes quite a while to develop and director Cimino indulges in a leisurely pace of direction. However, this does mean that the characters are firmly established in our minds before the middle section of the warfare takes place.
The Deer Hunter
Full Metal Jacket is famously divided into two sections. The boot camp training for the war, and the war zone itself. The boot-camp training sequence only lasts for forty minutes but it is one of the most memorable sequences ever committed to film and has been endlessly parodied elsewhere. New recruits, possibly conscripted, are given two months intensive boot camp training to turn them into killing machines under the tutelage of Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey). His incredibly blacky comic turn as the drill sergeant is one of the most amusing and memorable performances committed to celluloid. The point of the training is to turn the recruits into war machines by dehumanising them as much as possible before they are shipped off to fight in the war. At the same time they are being assessed to see where they will most appropriately be slotted into the war outfit.
Full Metal Training
Two characters are focussed on in this section, Private Joker (Modine), and Private Pyle (D' Onofrio), both of whom have been rechristened with nicknames to suit the whims of Sergeant Hartman. Private Pyle is a bit slow, and very unfit. He keeps messing up and is blamed for the entire training squad being punished by Sergeant Hartman. The squad give him a humiliating punishment themselves, in which Private Joker participates. To fit in, Pyle internalises the training completely to the extent that by the time it finishes, he is unable to let go, espeically of his rifle, which he now sees as an extension of himself. This leads to a disastrous and deadly conclusion to the first sequence, showing exactly to what extent eroding a man's humanity, and replacing it with only thoughts of killing, can lead to.
Vincent D'Onofrio as Private Pyle
The second parts of both Full Metal Jacket and The Deer Hunter take place in Vietnam amidst the fighting. This is where the most famous sequence in The Deer Hunter occurs, that of the Russian roulette game with a gun. John, Michael and Nick have been in Vietnam for a while when this sequence begins, and have been exposed to their share of fighting before they get captured by the Vietcong. They are held captive on a boat, where they witness the Vietnamese taking bets on a roulette game. Prisoners are forced to play in rounds, where each man has to hold a gun to his head, with one live bullet and five empty chambers, and pull the trigger not knowing if he will live or die. Steven is forced to play, but he has accidentally been shot by a previous competitor, and his nerves are gone. Michael is forced to play against Nick, but comes up with a plan, involving putting three bullets into the chambers instead of one, that will help them escape. The plan succeeds, but Nick gets separated from Michael and Steven in the aftermath.
The Deer Hunter
For Full Metal Jacket, Private Joker has been assigned to the journalistic division of the Vietnam corps; lightweight as far as fighting and war action goes. He is writing for a magazine for the troops, and putting a positive spin on the American war effort. However, he wants to write about the real war, not the one he is putting a spin upon. So, along with a photographer, he travels with a platoon to record the action. Private Joker embraces the internal conflict within people both for war and for peace by writing "Born to Kill" on his helmet, and pinning a badge with a peace symbol on it onto his chest. The latter he is told off for wearing by a more senior officer. Although less popular than the training sequence, this part of the film shows that no one can be a witness to war without being affected by it, and, eventually, having to take part, even if it is for humanitarin reasons. It also serves to balance out the first half by showing the result of all the rigorous training put into practice in the war zone. Although less entertaining than the first half, (but it is very hard for anything to top the first forty minutes), it still retains Kubrick's blackly comic tone as the soldiers on duty lark about, and chat up prostitutes, all while their lives are in danger. It ends with a dramatic conclusion and shows there cannot truly be any bystanders in war.
Matthew Modine in Full Metal Jacket
The Deer Hunter goes further by depicting the actual aftermath of war by showing how the soldeirs cope when they have returned. Michael is shown returning from the war first. Although outwardly fine - he has suffered no lasting injuries - he feels a divide between himself and his friends who did not fight in the war. There was always distance between himself and the others, but now he feels an even greater divide. Seeing that the town has learnt of his homecoming and has thrown a party, he cannot bare to attend, and so spends the night in a hotel. The only person to whom he feels a connection is Linda, who was engaged to Nick before he left for the war. Having always been attracted to her, he cannot help but make a move in Nick's continued absence. What had been a favourite pastime for the men is also no more as Michael goes deer hunting and finds that he no longer has the capacity to take innocent life.
Robert De Niro in The Deer Hunter
He learns that Steven has also returned from the war, but not intact. He bares the physical scars of warfare, having lost his legs and one arm. He is living in a hospital. As Michael adjusts to life, the lingering absence of Nick makes him, and the audience, question what has become of his friend. This leads to the lasting impact of The Deer Hunter as a film as Michael travels back to Vietnam to locate Nick when he discovers that he is still there. Nick, when found, is physically okay, but unlike Steven, all his scars are mental ones. He has not been able to mentally leave the horror he has witnessed in Vietnam, so is physically been unable to leave either. He has survived by doing the one thing he knows how to do, even though he knows what the outcome will ultimately be. This makes him the most tragic figure in the film, and symbolic of the price of war.
Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter
Thus both films carry a strongly anti-war message, and show that no one can remain unaffected from the changes it creates, from those left behind, to those who witness it, to those who participate.
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