FMJ Exam Question

Our emotional response to a film is determined by how we are made to connect with characters. 

How far has this been true with Full Metal Jacket? 

This is undeniably true of Full Metal Jacket, particularly in the case of the character Private Pyle and the first half of the film set in the marine core island boot camp.

This first half is intended to shape and mould the characters we see in the first scene into trained, hardened killers, uniform and conformist in every sense, following strict training regiments and learning that to avoid punishment they must stay in line and in-step with everybody else. This is further emphasised as a key part of this first half as we are constantly positioned to see this uniformity carried out in the background of many scenes, with other groups of marines in perfect unison. Uniformity is made compelling by Hartman, the harassing drill sergeant whose job it is to humiliate and punish each marine into becoming this ideal of the perfect 'killing-machine'. However, this strict code of solidarity and the need to conform is contravened by Private Pyle, a large character with a possible disability and clear lack of skill to train as a marine.

This is where Full Metal Jacket is different to many films in terms of forming an emotional response in the viewer, as many directors would allow for the audience to align with Pyle (that is to say you take his point of view) and abhor the marines. However, director Stanley Kubrick has instead opted to position Pyle as a threat to the overwhelming conformism of the marine core, and position us to actually align with the marines. This is achieved by Kubrick through the constant isolation Pyle endures in the frame as compared with the marines - meaning that Pyle as an outsider is a threat to the marines and their success and promotion, literally bring everyone down with him as in a scene involving running through mud and Pyle's trip causing other marines to stop or fall.

I do not empathise with Pyle, I empathise and align with "the core" of marines as in my personal experience I can understand how it feels to be held back by someone as Pyle has with the group. I only sympathise with the character because I can only think how it must feel to be as ostracised as he has been by the marines, as the film visually emphasises that Pyle is different, and a threat to the group's growing solidarity over the course of boot camp, by isolating him within the frame and using Hartman's tirades against him to draw attention to the character for the audience and marines, aligning the two in their opinion of Private Pyle as an outsider and as pathetic. The film has produced an "A-Central response", as I don't necessarily sympathise with the character in a physical sense with an emotive response, rather an apathetic one, imagining 'how it must feel' to be that character. N