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The Jaded Eye: Movie & Television Reviews
By C.W. Heiser
You are now in Boot Camp.
Basic Training. This is how the movie,
Full Metal Jacket, directed by Sydney
Kubrick opens. It is hard to describe the
bitter-funny pain I felt throughout the
first third of this movie. I went through
Navy Boot Camp and this is the rougher
Marine Basic. But it rings true, if only
because it is what all squids, and
probably doggies, would extrapolate as
to what it would take to make a Marine.
It is the pure hell of having
your personality broken down---and
brought back up to the program.
Kubrick has captured this process. The
basic/ground of this movie at first seems
chaotic, jumping from marching
formation to rows of recruits shining
boots, and then back to the formation,
never letting use get intimate with any
of the characters. At the beginning we
have to work to get close to the people
in this company, and it is the Drill
Instructor who picks out the main
characters for us. With an uncanny
ability, he names the character for us.
(The D.I. is played by Lee Ermey, who
was in real life a Marine Drill Instructor.
Ermey's D.I. shows the endearing Lou
Gossett's D.I. in An Officer And A
Gentleman up for what it is--a lame
construction of those who never did, or
can't recall, Basic. Ermey is right on in
his lack of humanity--I still hate my
company commander.)
It is as Basic Training ends that
we see how limiting that training is.
The screw-up whom the D.I. has named
Gomer Pyle, played brilliantly by
Vincent D'Onofrio, shapes up into a
Marine Killer. In a way, modeled after
the D.l.'s pet sharpshooter Lee Harvey
Oswald, he becomes a twistedly perfect
rifleman.
As I watched this unfolding of
Basic Training, I felt more than my own
distant memories of humiliation and
getting even. All around me, vets were
Artist Nadya Brown's Works on
Displ4 in Gallery Lounge
Six Gallery Lounge art exhibits have been selected for the 1987-88 school
year. The opening show will feature prints and paintings by Nadya Brown, a
California artist who has recently moved to Pennsylvania. Many of the pieces in this
exhibit allude to Greek and Italian culture and myth—pillars, architectural details
and fragments of statuary. A strong sense of drama pervades her striking composi
tions which feature eccentric light sources and viewpoints. The artist states that her
aim is to create an atmosphere of metamorphosis, energy transference, time and
history. She works from photos she takes and from found objects she arranges in her
studio.
Before moving to Santa Barbara, CA, Brown taught in a variety of schools
and colleges in the United States and England. Her work is autobiographical in that
it draws from places she has been. In 1984 she researched Renaissance, Greek, and
Roman architecture in Italy, Greece, and Spain.
Her most recent full time position was at Murray State University in
Kentucky where she was assistant professor of painting. She holds a M.F.A. from
Ohio State University and has exhibited her work throughout the U.S. and abroad,
including shows in New York City, at the National Museum of American Art,
Smithsonian Institute and in the annual show of Royal Society of Painters, Etchers
and Engravers, London.
This exhibit runs from August 20 through October 2. There will be a
reception for the artist on Tuesday, September 1, from 4:00 to 6:00 in the Gallery
Lounge. Everyone is welcome to attend.
talking back to the screen. This wasn't a
bunch of kids getting off on a car crash,
or some "hip" line to a screen bimbo,
we were grown men responding to a
situation we had known too well. As
Gomer Pyle screws up again and again,
we were all ready to pull the "blanket
party" we watched on screen.
It is only when we reach
Vietnam that we realize which character
is to be our surrogate. The "Joker" the
D.I. named in Basic, played by Matthew
Modino, becomes the protagonist.
Capital Times
This is the genius, and the
failure of Full Metal Jacket. Until late
in the film, when Joker meets up again
with the character "named" Cowboy, all
other characters from Basic are sloughed
off. Many viewers will have problems
with this bifurcate construction, but it is
a fact of military life. First you're in
one place with one bunch of people, and
then, almost suddenly, you are in
another strange place with a different set
of people. Unfortunately, Joker is not
the best character to carry the rest of the
1987-88 Art Exhibit Schedule
Aug. 20 - Oct. 2 Nadya Brown
Paintings & Prints
Oct. 5 - Nov. 13 Allen B. Cox
Paintings
Nov. 15 - Dec. 20 Ken Koplowitz
& Henry Troup
Photographs
Dec: 20 - Jan. 29 Henry Troup
Photographs
Feb. 1- Feb. 28 Richard Mayhew
Paintings
(Black History Month)
Mar, 1 - Apr, 10 Graduate Student Show
Apr. 10 M May 6 Student Art & Phut%
film. His wit is his protection and
armor, but it is this intelligence which
distances him, and us, from the war.
There is no discovery for him, or us in
Vietnam.
If anything, the Vietnam
sequences are even more chaotic, though
we now have Joker as an anchor. Here
Kubrick shows us another facet of
military life. While American fighting
men are trained to hold the same basic
values, they are American soldiers and
will not lockstep, even in combat
situations. This is what won the Second
World War, but, as in Vietnam, without
a consensus at home this leads to a
fragmentation of the troops.
Kubrick's troops are
disconnected from each other, and from
the Vietnamese peasants. As with the
character, Animal Mother, they define
themselves by individual prowess. It is
only at the end, as we follow one squad
being sucked into ambush, that the
Animal Mother, and then Joker connect
with anyone. This connection is with
the enemy, and it is by killing.
This final sequence is not for
the squeamish. Filmed mostly at waist,
or grunt, level we can feel the terror of
these troops as they are decimated.
(While this movie is bloody, unlike
most war movies, the deaths are not
uncountable, and may therefore register.)
It is here again that we see the failure of
Basic as these fully trained and equipped
Marines are outclassed by one lone V.C.
The failure of Full Metal Jacket
is not in the structure, which captures
the existential quality of military life,
but in the lack of human center, which
would illuminate that existence--Joker is
just too hip. While it is powerful, and
has the potential to be cathartic, finally,
the war in Full Metal Jacket is still "out
there."
Aug. 24, 1987