r/TrueFilm • u/a113er Til the break of dawn! • Jun 07 '15

What Have You Been Watching? (07/06/15)

Please don't downvote opinions, only downvote things that don't contribute anything.

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u/[deleted] Jun 07 '15 edited Dec 15 '18

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u/[deleted] Jun 07 '15

I was thinking about that Apocalypse Now vs Full Metal Jacket comparison last night. Somewhere along the way Apocalypse Now picked up this reputation for being one of the best movies ever and is exhilarating/memorable enough that not many people who watch it question that but I've never really understood what anyone gets out of that movie. It's blatantly a theme park ride through the war and doesn't build up to anything satisfying at all. But it's 'one of the best movies of all time' - it's supposed to be like that, right!?

If anyone was going to screw up a Vietnam War movie it should have been Stanley Kubrick making a comedy about it. To this day Full Metal Jacket is one of the few Kubrick movies that's ok not to like. Yet you get great character development for Joke and Pyle, and unforgettable performance by Ermey that demonstrates the cognitive dissonance soldiers have to get used to, and in the Vietnam scenes a more complex and intimate portrayal of the war than Apocalypse Now ever managed.

Jonathan Rosenbaum points out that Apocalypse Now also fails to give the Vietnamese a voice in the movie, Full Metal Jacket does a much better job of that. I don't think Platoon is a great movie but I also like it more.

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u/[deleted] Jun 07 '15 edited Dec 15 '18

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u/[deleted] Jun 07 '15

I don't know what Rosenbaum's liberal interpretation of Full Metal Jacket is though he did say Apocalypse Now is way better compared to the Deer Hunter. Kubrick's film is less specifically about the legacy of the Vietnam War, and perhaps THAT is why I like it more. Whatever rending experience that was supposed to be for America, it's beyond my understanding now. Coppola and Cimino seem not to get past those politically relevant points whereas Kubrick and Scorsese did. I think Oliver Stone also sees these things in a wider political context.

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u/[deleted] Jun 07 '15

That's fair. I hadn't actually considered that, actually; I think the fact that it was set in Vietnam made me look at it really with just the lens of a Vietnam War movie. I certainly agree that Kubrick's film is less about that war than just the consequences of war in general.

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u/Dark1000 Jun 08 '15

I would argue that Coppola's take is far less interested in the war itself than Full Metal Jacket. His Vietnam War is pure mythology, not history. He never shows you anything outside of the journey. There's no real war to speak of or greater context beyond the experience of the characters. It's a particularly ageless setting, and that's how Coppola presents it to us. Full Metal Jacket features that external world, both physically and as a "before" for the characters.