heavyweights

films are like frankenstein's monster, except they're not murdered at the end. and so they wander our culture in perpetuity, and can be made to battle a la "hobo fights." i am always having hobo fights of frankenstein's monsters movies in my head when thinking "was that movie i saw any good?"

sure, most films are better than puking or being forced to eat grapefruit but was my time really well spent? so "jarhead" goes into the ring with good ole "full metal jacket" and jacket whips jarhead on characters and tension alone. first round knockout, "full metal jacket" remains the war movie heavyweight. eventually, as is the case with war movies, so many films have been knockedout consecutively that i rarely submit any films to the process anymore. to have a really great war movie we're going to have to have a really great war, and frankly i can wait.

WAR MOVIES
"full metal jacket." i saw this when i was 16. my friend anthony had gotten his license and we'd driven all the way up to cinema du park, and parked in their underground garage, one of the few times ive even done so. i thought the movie was going to be a wise-crackin' rock and roll war extravaganza, but felt really strange after the movie was over. i've probably seen it about five times now, not including recently in hilarious edited-for-tv form ("inside every gook in an american, waiting to get out" fade out. commercials.)

"full metal jacket" vs. "apocalypse now"
at cannes francis ford coppola said about "apocalypse now" that "this is not a film about vietnam, it IS vietnam." he said this, of course, because he was a little crazy, ravished by the 300+ shooting days and the anxiety assured sin of investing millions of one's own into a movie which was consistently burning, sinking and having heart attacks in the jungle. anyhow, the point is that he was wrong. "apocalypse now" is a movie about vietnam no more than a commercial of honey is a film about bees.

"apocalypse now" is a big, cathartic culture shit, where significant artists go blow up more southeast asian jungle in a vain attempt to make any personal sense out of the real war, which none of them witnessed. it is a wonderful, surreal film, but no more a war film than "alice in wonderland."

on the other hand, kubrick could have claimed that his film was like going to vietnam, and he'd probably be quite correct. the scary part of the film is the first part which is so intense that once we arrive in vietnam it is quite easy, almost exciting and liberating, to go around witnessing the carnage along with joker. sure, things get a little hairy, but its still easy to relax and sing. war is like a party compared to bootcamp.

in fact, a lot of war films suffer from apocalypse now syndrome in that their stories could be relocated to peacetime and told just as well (almost all tribunal investigation war films, so popular in the '90s, didnt need violent flashbacks to tell their stories.) what makes "full metal jacket" significant is that perhaps it is one of the few anti-war films.

the ways we war// are war movies all prowar?
what is a war movie? it is a movie about war. in which ways can it be about war?

first, films about war must correspond with wars we have filmed. historical and fantasy war films are different. war films should be classified by the ways in which they use war as a referent.

most war films are about the combatants. this is because refugees are too busy to write scripts, and their governments do not give out grants. sometimes, their governments do not give out food.

1. war can be the plot of a film. of course, if it is the plot it is also generally the setting, but i make this distinction to highlight that in some war films, the outcome of the war is crucial to the emotional climax of the plot. that both cinemastiste and audience are remouved from the immediate historical context allows them to reinterpret both military successes ("laurence of arabia," "patton," "zulu") and failures ("gallipoli," "blackhawk down," "thirteen days," "the battle of algiers")

2. war is most often the setting, in which case it would be appropriate to divide them into action films and war dramas.

•action films are just that, they revel in the violence of conflict and allow the audience to cheer for the protagonists ("indiana jones," "three kings," "the great escape," "enemy at the gates") especially if it is to their deaths ("pearl harbor," "saving private ryan," "bridge on the river qwai.")

unsurprisingly—because most of these films are about nazis and the axis—these films rarely question the merit of killing. indeed generally the arena of violence is a pre-given to the rest of the plot. therefore, normal codes of morality are suspended and replaced with WWII-era Allied values, which we can absorb gently while sitting on the couch.

action war films generally refer to war as noble and necessary and to the combatant protagonists as patriotic and valourous. in the few examples where the characters are not combatants ("empire of the sun," for instance) then it is the enemy who is portrayed as weak and underhanded, malicious and wretched. the killing of antagonists brings us to our feet, as in art we revisit our glories of battle. however, and say unlike a newsreel, what does else are we cramming into action war films besides proud references to our history?

(a good example would be the "fuck hitler/i love mickey mouse" guy in "saving private ryan" who's life is spared by benevolent americans and who ironically returns later in the film to kill some more of them, ones we like. what is this saying? IN WAR, KILL THEM WHILE YOU CAN. and while that may be true of nazis, what else is that message carrying with in into the '90s (and beyond)?)

(¿is "saving private ryan" a film about the intifada?)

• we'll say war dramas, though this can include comedies ("mash," "catch 22," "good morning, vietnam") and love stories ("casablanca," "the english patient") as well. the characters in these films function as agents, even if they are combatants. as such, it is not so much what they are doing as HOW they are doing it that drives the film.

it could be said that war dramas investigate how war affects individuals. ("apocalypse now," "the thin red line," "schindler's list," "platoon," "paths of glory," "deer hunter," "das boot," "born on the fourth of july," "coming home.") HOW DO WAR DRAMAS REFER TO WAR?

but then where is "dr strangelove," and where is "full metal jacket."