Anti-war films are valuable because they can show the cruelty of war to uninformed audiences through the harmless form of the screen. Since the Vietnam War, there have been a large number of anti-war movies, such as "Field Platoon", "Deer Hunter", "Apocalypse Now", etc. These movies are wonderful and thought-provoking. In this context, Kubrick's "Full Metal Shell" also tried to reflect the cruelty of war in its own way.
The film consists of two sections, the first of which reflects the soldiers' military training before joining the war. Unlike most movies that face the miserable situation on the battlefield, Kubrick chose this rare angle to reflect the ubiquitous harm of war to human nature. Outside the battlefield, soldiers have been subjected to harsh and inhumane physical, discipline and spiritual training, and gradually wiped out the weakness and kindness in human nature, turning people into killing machines, while unqualified people were faced with cold violence from the masses. destroy. This is a terrible injury to human nature, and what makes people feel even more terrifying is that all this is done in the name of lawfulness, and the war has distorted human nature so far. This angle is very clever. In order to increase the appeal, the movie adds countless collections of swear words that make people laugh and cry, giving the movie a sense of black humor. At the same time, Vincent Donofeo's perfect performance is also a great tribute to the cruelty and depression of cold violence.
The second half of the film returns to the battlefield. Like most anti-war films, it focuses on the inhumanity of the battlefield, such as the killing of civilians, the death of comrades in battle, and the abnormal people (girls, prostitutes) involved in the war... On this basis, Kubrick also tried to incorporate more element styles on the basis of normal routines. The first is that the narrator is a reporter behind the battlefield. Since the main activity is behind the battlefield, the film is able to look at the war from a non-tension perspective, like the "Army Field Hospital" to joking about the war. For example, the consideration of words in news conferences and reports on the death toll all reflect the nature of war, such as the bargaining of soldiers to solve their physiological needs. This kind of abnormal battlefield scenes also eliminates the sacred war; secondly, the movie inserts soldiers. The interviewed montage clips directly showed the views of the parties on the war on the screen, highlighting the anti-war voice; in the end, it was still black humor. Unlike most of the expressions that face the cruel, bitter and enmity on the battlefield, the movie always shows the war under the circumstances of joking and humor. Even if the comrades die in battle, they don't exaggerate the sadness too much. The atmosphere of the movie is always calm. This makes the war absurd, and at the same time it further erases the soldier's humanity of the war, taking care of the killing machine in the first half of the movie.
The film tries to show the cruelty of war itself from all aspects, so the film also breaks away from the ordinary anti-Vietnam war category and rises to the broad anti-war level. At the end of the movie, the protagonist's hesitation and struggle when facing the frequently dying Viet Cong girls is the best interpretation of human nature in this movie. This kind of humanistic care is also the reason why the movie becomes unique and magical.
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