To be honest, I don’t think Kubrick is interested in cruising against the crimes committed by Uncle Sam in Vietnam. This is just an old tune in human history. And he didn't intend to discuss the ravages and distortions of war on people. After all, everyone in the film, including Pyle, who showed a clockwork orange smile, was not entrapped by fate into the barracks. At the beginning, they didn't struggle when shaving their hair, like a submissive puppet, they accepted everything behind. At the beginning, Joker said loudly: "I'm here to kill!" Therefore, "killing is right" is already the consensus of the director and the audience at the beginning of the film. Under this setting, Kubrick tells the story of a so-called duality man experiencing war.
The dirty language of the whole film is a bright spot, but it seems to be a question: "Why can people get happiness and release from this language?" Why do men in military camps need to masturbate ten times a day, and why do they need prostitutes and comfort women? It suddenly occurred to me that in "breaking bad", Walter was so eager in the early days of drug trafficking. It seemed to be a sign of desperation. The threat of death faced by soldiers on the battlefield is not only the driving force for their killing, but also the source of the panic that naturally arises when their divinity dissolves. Internal conflicts cannot find an export, and they can only turn to the outside; men turn to prostitutes, and the United States turns to Vietnam.
People often admit the legitimacy of desire, without desire, there will be no development, and everything will remain unchanged. However, there is no self, gods and men have no merit, and saints have no name. truth. The best do not need nothing, they will no longer be hungry for physical satisfaction, and will no longer have more motivation and desire to conquer and lie. The beauty of human nature is actually a misnomer of the divinity of human beings. Its basic principle is "the sex of sex is also", meaningless morality. When we understand this, it is difficult for us to look at the story of everyone in the film with a preconceived sense of moral superiority. Because under that condition, our morality and self-discipline may also be ineffective. The value of Kubrick's "Full Metal Shell" is also here. He killed all our illusions and made us realize the fragility and unreliability of human beings immersively.
In the barracks, the relationship between Pyle and the Joker is very interesting. The Joker did his best to help Pyle, even help him dress and encourage him, but he played the hardest in the soap incident that night. CS Lewis praised friendship as "the closest feeling to the love of God in the world" in "Four Loves", but the relationship between the clown and Pyle is so contradictory that we have to think about the motives of the clown.
The contradiction in the role of Joker is incomprehensible. Perhaps Kubrick does not want the audience to empathize with any of the characters in the film. He does not want the audience to be confused by any plausible reasons. In Kubrick's view, everything is a lie, including the so-called duality.
Everyone is contradictory, but not to the point where they still wear the Peace Medal when killing on the battlefield. He said: "I don't know. I think I represent the duality of humanity." Hehe, there should be Kubrick's sneer here. Obviously people with a little bit of brain will not recognize the words of the military officer: "We are here to help the Vietnamese, and every Vietnamese is willing to be an American. The world is crazy, and we must remain calm until crazy. The peace movement dissipated." But why does it work, allowing so many young American boys to give their precious lives on the battlefield? It is a lie, but why are we deceived?
Is the hippie who wears the Peace Medal necessarily right? Kubrick never gave the hippies a good look. The hippies in Kubrick’s shots are essentially the same as the killing machines on the battlefield. The same mob, the same arrogance, the same self-righteousness, and the same lack of moderation. , Even we have to suspect that the clown itself is such a representative figure. He is a peace-loving hippie, and he is also a killing machine. His contradiction is nothing more than a lie that the same person tells himself under different circumstances, and it is essentially the same.
These two are essentially the same but the apparently distinct contradiction is difficult to find an outlet. Most people will choose to go to a fairly single extreme, either to be a peace-loving hippie or a pure killing machine. When a person has two contradictions at the same time, if a reconciliation is not achieved by diverting attention and contradictions, it will cause the collapse of the internal system. A soldier said: "The people we kill today will be the best humans we know. Once we return to the United States, there will be no one worthy of our shooting." Yes, so that American soldiers will not shoot. Hippies, why? Not because they are compatriots, but because this contradiction is negligible.
Until Joker personally killed a great and outstanding woman, he was finally slapped severely by himself. Duality is a lie, and the real answer is that we don’t know anything about ourselves. Killing at a distance is like the relationship between a thing and me, it doesn't matter, but a killing at a close distance is a personal fight between one person and oneself. Do we really understand ourselves and understand our choice motives under the many contradictions? Have we really questioned the source of our contradictions? Questioned your judgment of goodness?
The film ends here, and the clown returns to life. But Kubrick was sharp and unstoppable.
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