SSC Film Studies

Most films will encourage the spectator to align with a central character so a preferred reading of a film can be taken?

(Plan)

First half of the movie plan

Full Metal Jacket is not a conventional war film and actually tries to get as far away as possible from being an conventional war film. One way this film does this is by not having a protagonist or antagonist so audiences were not able to get any sort of reading from the movie 

We align with the group not an individual

Everyone is shot in the same way 

Everyone gets the same amount of screen time

Everyone loses their identity from the start from the barber scene this means any chance we had of aligning with someone is gone.

Everyone is in groups in this movie showing the link to conformity

Stanley Kubrick actually had a special lens developed especially for this movie to make sure that the background was more in focus than the foreground.

Even when there is narration from Joker it always happens when looking at the group so it makes us align with the group even more because Joker is not speaking about his own personal feelings but the feelings of the group.

To make sure that we never align with just one character Kubrick uses a lot of wide shots because if he was to use close-ups instead he would be making us align with characters which would defeat the whole point of the film.

A lot of directors usually use empathy for us to connect with a character for example Marley and me. Now that is why Kubrick does use empathy because empathy fuels connection but he only uses empathy for the group. That is because Kubrick wants us to feel sympathy for Pyle as sympathy drives disconnection. So once Pyle starts to hold the group back we start to get annoyed with him because we have not emphasised with him but we sympathised with him instead