War Against Ourselves

            This was my first time to see both Platoon and Full Metal Jacket and I enjoyed both more than I expected. Although I have never been a fan of gore and war, it was the psychological war that kept me engaged in both movies. We have begun to hear more and more recently about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with Iraq soldiers but since I have never had a close family member in combat I never had a full understanding of the mental affects of war. Not until I saw the movie Brothers did I fully realize the effects of war could be far more scarring mentally than physically.  The filmmakers of both Platoon and Full Metal Jacket do a fabulous job of depicting this struggle.

            I enjoyed Platoon far more than Full Metal Jacket. For me, it was very difficult to listen to screaming the first 30 minutes of the movie. I could barely stand it, and had significantly lower the volume just to get through the scenes.  So, I can only imagine actually being in the boot camp and the toll it would take on me psychologically, I wouldn’t last a day.  In both movies right from the beginning, subservience and superiority were stressed.  Although the settings were totally different, in both boot camp and the jungle the soldiers were immediately forced to give into the situation and give themselves up to their sergeants. Their minds were ingrained with the fact that they are a “grunt” and that they are the lowest of the low. The placement of Joker and Taylor into the infantry was a good contrast and showed that everyone in the war was equal no matter what the background, they were all “maggots”. In the end of the psychological breakdown the objective was to make them impressionable, lifeless, and without opinion because that was the disconnect needed to be able to see and do such atrocities. Taylor explains this in Platoon when he describes the fight between Elias and Barnes for his soul. Paradoxically, the hostile environments also brewed selfishness and numbing hate within the soldiers. There are many examples of this in Platoon including the death of Elias and Barnes, and the rape of the Vietnamese girls.  In the rape scene Bunny described the girl as just a “thing”. But really the soldiers were more like the things, killing machines without emotion or empathy.

            Although different, both Platoon and Full Metal Jacket taught me about different aspects of war and the time and labor that go into making a good solider. I noticed that both of the movies brought out many different emotions in me including anger about the war, pity for the soldiers, and sadness for the Vietnamese people. Stone and Kubrick did an amazing job evoking these emotions so that viewers can get just a piece of the psychological reality of Vietnam. I know that I will not soon forget these movies just as the psychological effects of Vietnam lingered on for those soldiers far longer than the physical pain.