I get the idea that Kubrick was setting him up as the villain, in that the audience is supposed to sympathize with Gomer Pyle and hate the drill instructor. But the way R. Lee Ermey portrayed him, he seems perceptive, respectful of the recruits (in his own way) and very intent on pushing them to overcome their weaknesses and learn to be Marines. He’s anything but irrational or capricious or a power-mad psycho.
*He punches Joker in the gut and chews him out, but seems immediately to recognizes his potential and challenges him to put on his “war face.” Later he encourages Joker, “Lemme hear your war cry!”
*He seems to deliberately set up the confrontation with Joker over the Virgin Mary as a test, and then (I think?) promotes him when he passes.
*He’s incredibly hard on Pyle, but it looks to me like Pyle needs it. Even the part where he institutes a collective punishment on the whole group for each of Pyle’s screwups seems to me to be a justified lesson. If Pyle disregard orders and sneaks a jelly donut into his foot locker, would he also be prone to slacking off or falling asleep while standing sentry and getting the whole group killed?
Pyle might have turned out to be a decent Marine, entirely thanks to Hartman, if Pyle wasn’t also unfortunately a deep down psycho.
Am I alone in thinking so? Would Kubrick have approved of this interpretation?
I always considered him something an asshole myself, but most grunts I’ve chatted with are of your opinion that he was actually doing his level best to get his Marines in shape for Viet-Nam, so they wouldn’t get killed.
I’m confident Ermey, having himself been a DI during the war and being a strong military supporter, would have refused to play it any other cocksucking Commie way. Nor would Kubrick would have wanted to direct it any other way since he was shooting for perfect accuracy, with all the ambiguity that implies. You’re *supposed *to ask yourself that question.
As for me, I have no doubt Pyle shipping out less than fully competent or discipled would indeed have put other soldiers’ lives in jeopardy. I still think the proper course of action would have been to kick him out rather than try and push him so hard, however. Some people just aren’t meant to be mean Marines, and a good DI should recognize that.
I’m not a veteran, but, I think his behavior is SOP for a drill instructor.
He also was just as quick to praise Pyle when he did something right. Gut punching Joker was a good thing. His joke wasn’t funny, and his carelessness was just as indicative of being a danger to his crew as the doughnut was.
Best wishes,
hh
PS. Just reread **Kobal2’s **post, and now I remember that when I saw the movie, I was impressed by the idea that Pyle was retarded, rather than just dippy, and should have been kicked out earlier.
Was he a bad person? Probably not. Was he implementing bad doctrine? IMHO, yes, although he had no real way of knowing that. He acted the best he could considering his training and his orders, and within those constraints, did a pretty good job.
He was, however, a bit of an idiot in his last scene with Pyle. DI or not, you don’t berate a mentally unstable man pointing a loaded weapon. Marines are supposed to display adaptability - he should have adapted to the circumstances, instead of following regular DI protocol of calling his troops worthless pieces of shit.
Gunnery Sargeant Hartman did his job and did it very well. I have never been in the active service, but basic training is there to mold the men into a cohesive unit. It is a very challenging and difficult task. If you notice towards the end, Hartman was still very strict, but was probably proud at his recruits, and even praised Pvt. Pyle for his shooting abilities. He obviously liked Joker, “who do you think you are, Micky fucking Spillane? You’re a killer!”
Gunny Hartman was the victim in the end. The real villians were (in the story), the U.S. Government for drafting a slow, mentally ill person in the service in the first place, and the other recruits who beat the shit out of him in the “blanket party” scene. I have had people in the military state that no recruit in basic would have a weapon, especially a loaded weapon in barracks. However, I have also heard that an Army recruit did just that in basic training. I would think that keeping the ammo in a secure place can prevent exactly what happened in the film, a mentally ill person going over the edge and kill the guy who’s been calling me Gomer Pyle for two fucking months.
R. Lee Ermey was a consultant on the movie and actually worked with Stanley Kubrick about changing some of the scenes, stating that it is not the way it would be in real life. There was one deleted or cut part, where the Gunny was going to stick Gomer’s head in the toilet as a punishment, but Ermey stated that a DI would never do that, even in the “old days”. I don’t know if belting Joker in the gut is a violation of the USMJ, but it was the 1960’s, it was the old days. Probably would not be tolerated today.
Hartman was hilarious. If I was his recruit, he would of strangled me to death. I wish Ermey would do a stand up comedy act of his military experiences and various Sargeants and DI’s. Would be interesting, especially with someone who has never been in the service.
Not sure how significant a quibble this is, but if the recruit was in the Marines I don’t think he was drafted there. Maybe it makes the government more culpable for not being as selective as it’s supposed to be regarding Marine recruits.
As a matter of fact, in real life would someone like Leonard have been accepted to try out for the Marines back then?
Now, that, though, is where I feel things get ambiguous. Hartman had to have known that the other recruits would have retaliated against Pyle. What else could he have meant about “you people” giving Pyle “the proper motivation?”
I thought the whole point was that the drill instructor ultimately did his job and turned Pyle into a killer, like he was supposed to do and ultimately the point of his instruction. You make weapons, don’t be surprised when one of them explodes on you, or misfires, or is turned against you and someone gets killed… as ambivalent as that, no need to bring good or bad into it.
I’m always amazed that Vincent Donofrio is the same guy that was Thor/Dawson in Adventures in Babysitting AND Detective Robert Goren in Law & Order Criminal Intent.
If you ask me that a pretty wide swath of acting range.
I was in the Marines, and went through Parris Island about the same time as R Lee Remey (but I’ve never met him). He played the Drill Instructor probably the same way he WAS a drill instructor in the Corps.
The boot camp section of Full Metal Jacket was exactly the way I remember boot camp, with one exception… we were warned early on that a “blanket party” beating was not allowed and would be dealt with severely if one happened.
Mostly agree, but I think his teaching methodology could be questioned.
I suppose one could make the argument that humiliating Pyle might motivate him. But walking behind the platoon with his pants down, sucking his thumb? How much of that was deliberate for training, and how much was just plain punitive? Hartman did indeed turn Pyle into a killer - a poorly designed one. Then he reacted incorrectly when Pyle turned on him.
My take on it is that Hartman was a good DI for a long time, but he got careless. Sort of like a tiger trainer in the circus. Do it long enough and you may fool yourself into thinking you have the animals under complete control. But in the end, they’re still dangerous animals that can kill you if provoked.
Robert Heinlein’s book “Starship Troopers” addresses this. The main character, a recruit in the futuristic marines, overhears an officer dressing down his DI for carelessness. The incident: he relaxed enough to allow a recruit to hit him. The officer reminds him that although the DI may come to be proud of the recruits, he can’t forget that they are still wild, unpredictable youngsters. Given the chance, they could take a poke at the DI, and he must never allow that punch to successfully land.
The Marines have a “fat bodies” menu at the mess hall that is required for recruits that are overweight. A few of the overweight guys also couldn’t keep up on long runs and would fall to the back of the platoon, then fall behind. To remedy this problem, our drill instructor would have other recruits carry their gear to lighten their load… then if they continued to fall back, they would have three recruits, run as they carried the overweight recruit.
I can think of nothing more humiliating… sucking a thumb would have been preferable.
These overweight recruits would almost pass out running rather than to be carried again.
I don’t know about back in those days or about the Marines, but in the Army in the late 1980’s there was literally no access to a weapon during basic training unless the weapons were being checked out of (and then back into, after cleaning) the armory for a training exercise. There was no “taking your weapon to bed”…I always wondered if that was bullshit from the film or not. Because it actually would be pretty easy to smuggle a few rounds of live ammunition off the firing range if you had constant access to the weapon that fired it.
In the Marines, you are issued a rifle early in training and have it with you much of the time. If you screwed up with a weapon, you’d sleep with it. There is no access to live ammunition until later in training when you spend two weeks at the rifle range to qualify. At that time a recruit could possibly smuggle a few rounds back to the barracks.
I think you are wrong. In Full Metal Jacket, as in other Kubrick movies, the film is an analysis of a descent into insanity. The situation is the villain, not any individual.