Monday, September 17, 2007
Paint It Black
The Rolling Stones' song "Paint It Black" was featured in Full Metal Jacket. I believe this is one of the most important songs from the movie. It isn't expressively about the Vietnam war, but it is a song which could serve great meaning for all of those who did serve in Vietnam. It represents many different things such as premature death, the loss of innocence, and the loss of hope. Black represents many different things, but the one we are almost all familiar with is death. "Paint It Black" addresses the depression that was suffered during these times. When a soldier walked off the battle grounds still alive, one can only imagine what would be going through his mind. The line in the song "I see a line of cars and they're all painted black" also is very meaningful. When the soldiers returned back to the states, many of them had to go to many funerals of fellow soldiers. Although this song isn't expressively for Vietnam, it is a very powerful song that could be related to any war.
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Full Metal Jacket boasts one of the best soundtracks in 80s cinema. In keeping with Kubrick's direction and cinematography, the soundtrack is not only chronologically correct (all songs produced before 1968), but it smacks Platoon around conceptually, particularly with LSD-laced genre numbers like "Surfin' Bird" and out-of-context commercial hits like the theme from the "Mickey Mouse Club," with which the film closes.
It's worth paying attention to the soundtrack in part because the more surprising selections come in the second half of the split movie, after the movie has ended for most viewers, since it's so hard to leave Sargeant Hartman, Private Pyle, and America behind in favor of Joker and Vietnam. This problem of Kubrick's divided vision of the Vietnam experience--morally bankrupt at home and amoral abroad--is the great challenge of watching it; the most amazing thing about "Paint it Black's" appearance in this movie is not that "Paint it Black" is in of itself distressing or compelling, but rather that it has been forced alongside a rendition of "These Boots Were Made for Walking," sung by Nancy Sinatra but associated with the prostitute at the movie's center, just when we see Vietnam itself for the first time (we expected jungle and the Doors, but we got Saigon and Nancy Sinatra). "Full Metal Jacket" is a film of compounded juxtaposition; what happens when we place it alongside Platoon? What happens when we try to join its two halves and their cacophonous music?
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