Full Metal Jacket

So I watched Full Metal Jacket last night, finally. It was fascinating, to say the least, to watch after taking in the entire Band of Brothers set. They are nearly polar opposites. Of course, BoB is a WWII epic, where FMJ is seated near the end of the Vietnam War.

There was a lot I couldn't understand with Kubrick's film. Why was Pyle clearly literate during altercations with the Sargeant, and yet so absolutely retarded around Joker and the other recuits? What was being said by having the infantry member at the end resemble Pyle, but not carry some of the same characteristics? Why are the men performing CPR on men who have been shot in the leg/stomach/face?

I felt the battle sequences in FMJ were horrid. Unrealistic, cliche, and at about the level that I could write. Kubrick was never in the war, and so I feel like he read about the Marine training, but skipped everything after that. It was really interesting to watch the unrealistic parts after seeing the much more real Band o Bros.

That being said, FMJ stands as one of the few films that has made me feel nauseated while watching. There's a shot as the men enter an area that they are pretty sure is infested with enemies; the camera stays low, hovering low among the men, with an epically long shot as they move up. The shot continued, making me wish it would end and ease my risen emotions. That scene feels like a TWO on the nausea scale compared to the completely unnerving moment in which Joker and Rafterman are talking to the helicopter gunner.  This is a man who is gunning down anyone he sees, regardless if they look like soldiers or not, with a mounted machine gun, smiling and laughing while he does it. His response as to how he is able to shoot women and children is, "Easy. Ya just don't lead 'em so much, ha, ha ha! Ain't war hell?"

So all of this said, I looked up some different opinions dissecting the film. So far no one has mentioned anything about the medics on the field or the similarity between Animal Mother and Pvt. Pyle. These questions will just sit in the big pool of ambiguity that is a Kubrick film.