The Price of Change: What Full Metal Jacket Is Really About (Pt.1) - Film Analysis

Full Metal Jacket is one film but two stories. The first story, which takes place on Parris Island, follows hopeless Marine recruit, Leonard (Gomer Pyle) Lawrence. Drill Sergeant Hartman's duty is to mold Pyle into something inverse to his nature. Even after commanding Joker to assist his transformation project, Hartman falls short of his objective. Not until Pyle endures torture at the hands of his fellow recruits is he able to become "born again hard." But what is the cost of changing the core of who you are? That is the question I attempt to answer in this Full Metal Jacket analysis.

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#fullmetaljacket #movies #vietnamwar

[jasonryan]

Hartman absolutely knew the platoon would turn on Pyle and take matters into their own hands. That was the whole point of mass punishment.

[manueljimenez]

I enlisted in 1987, three months after the release of this movie. Every recruit must have seen this movie, as I did before enlisting. The blanket parties were off the wall. By the way, it is considered blasphemous to call a Marine a "soldier."

[RX-]

The book this is based on shows that Hartman suspects Pyle is going crazy, but he intimidates the recruits into keeping quiet about it, because he's already had several other recruits drop out and if he loses Pyle as well, it will bring unwanted attention from his superiors. So he just wants Pyle to get through the training so he can move on and be someone else's problem.

[mattschlegel]

My view of the jelly doughnut scene is that Hartman wasn't punishing Pyle for stealing, he was punishing him for getting caught. For drawing attention by not locking his footlocker. Not only is he training them for combat but also for the possibility that they become prisoners of war where it might be necessary to steal food and getting caught could lead to every prisoner being searched.

[cb]

It wasn't really discussed until years later, but the scenes with Pyle are referencing "McNamara's Morons". When the US government wanting to increase the draft, they lowered the standards and let in people who were too low IQ or mentally unfit for service. This program had disastrous results, these soldiers were 3-5 times more likely to be killed or seriously injured in combat.

[TiminatorK]

The point being...not everybody has what it takes, physically, mentally, spiritually to be a Marine. Trying to force it...is bad for both sides in terms of wasted time, effort and, resources. Pyle should have been washed out but, Hartman's pride was both their undoing. The concept of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole exists for a very sound reason.

[rick-dymt]

Pyle's story made me cry because i can relate to his situation: wanting to be someone you are not meant to be or just cant become, and being tortured for it

[threeone]

A heartwarming story about a man's struggle with weight loss.

[jkdbuck]

2:56 In an interview, Gunny said that when he was a DI during Vietnam, the government needed more Marines so boot camp was cut from like 14 weeks down to 10 or some such thing. He said that many DI's turned barbaric and brutal because they didn't understand how to accelerate the training. He said that HE never became brutal, but some of his colleagues did.

[maxn.]

Full Metal Jacket was ostensibly an antiwar film, but it turned into one of the greatest recruiting tools for the USMC. Every Marine I know has seen it at least once. Many joined because of it, not in spite of.

[plaidpvcpipe]

Pyle is really a great example of a theme that permeates the film. He illustrates the cruelty of the system that drove him to suicide. It's shocking when he kills Hartman and himself, and at that point I think that Kubrick really kicked off the horrific showing of how the military crushes people, how the bureaucratic awfulness of it all destroys the souls of countless kids.

[nexusdrop]

The actor (for Pyle) did such a good job. I hope he is both proud and knows that he was part of an iconic movie that may very well never meet it's match.

[Nitephall]

I don't think it's correct to interpret Pyle as "turning evil" in the end of the film. That's a shallow interpretation. The dude had a psychotic break. His brain simply could not deal with the harsh realities of the world he found himself in, which he calls "a world of sh*t." Same thing happened with the computer HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Two irreconcilable systems of programming in one brain. A solution cannot be found, and a complete breakdown of the psyche occurs.

[daftquo]

I read that in the book when Pyle kills Hartman (or, the Hartman character whose name in the book escapes me) Hartman tells Pyle that he's proud of him before he dies, because he had turned him into a killer. I'd have liked to have seen that in Full Metal Jacket.

[Eirik_Bloodaxe]

Having been through boot camp, I’d say that the depiction here is pretty spot on. I never saw anyone get their ass beat by a DI or by recruits. But the group punishment, the intentional humiliation, the off the wall, creative remarks by DIs, and the dark humor speeches are all absolutely true. I think most people are able to adapt to the situation, but sometimes it just flat out breaks people. Some of the fittest, most Moto poolees I knew ended up washing out, and some of the most out of shape fat bodies, managed to excel and make it to the end with flying colors.

[AspieOperator]

They should’ve named Whiplash, Full Metal Tempo.

[InnerDness]

Fletcher and Hartman both achieved exactly their goal with both Nieman and Pyle. Their same goal was to break their student down and rebuild them from the outside in, turning them into what they wanted their students to be.
The problem with this is that its infinitely harder to rebuild something than it is to destroy it. The trouble with building outside in is that you can only ever see the surface. The inside may still be in shambles. Hartman wanted a mindless killer who's thoughts were always about ending the enemy, and that's what he got. The machine he built couldn't differentiate Hartman from the idea of the "enemy". Nieman, likewise, became a very impressive and skilled musician, as Fletcher wanted, but isolated, walled off from any human connection, bitter, angry, vindictive and selfish. Another Fletcher, who will probably inflict similar torment on someone he mentally abuses, and the wheel turns.
The only difference being that Hartman suffered negatively for his breakage of a young man's psyche, whereas Fletcher revelled with pride at the hollow automaton he created.

[einundsiebenziger]

Saw the movie a few days after my 16th birthday. While as a teen I enjoyed the first 10 minutes of the film full of verbal abuse, I also was shocked by its message which I understood as "the horror of a human having been turned into a killing machine becomes even more obvious when that killing machine attacks its own people".

[Zanthum]

Gomer Pyle was also a commentary on McNamara's 100, 000 where the military was forced to lower their recruiting standards to meet quotas instead of accepting qualified applicants. It was to illustrate that by forcing the acceptance of handicapped individuals, they would not only put themselves in danger, but would endanger everyone around them by holding them back.

[johnjohnston]

You are wrong. Hartman absolutely knows they will "motivate" him (blanket parties at this time were SOP). They were not "evil". Hartman was betting the peer pressure and retaliation would be enough to get him to do what is expected. It is a closed environment and he would never expect him to have a live weapon off the range. It was an overconfidence in a common practice, not a miscalculation.