Comparative Analysis of Full Metal Jacket and Ratcatcher

The Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni once wrote that “cinema should be tied to truth rather than logic” and this assertion is a useful heuristic when considering a close analysis of the evocative directing styles of Stanley Kubrick and Lynne Ramsay. In this essay, key sequences in Full Metal Jacket (Kubrick, USA, 1987) and Ratcatcher (Ramsay, UK, 1999) will be compared and contrasted and it will be argued that while seemingly unlikely bedfellows, these films are somewhat analogous with respect to their treatment of male development and the subtle suggestion of government as remote through innovative twists on cinematic convention.

At the time of its release Full Metal Jacket was taken as “part of the Vietnam War cycle that emerged in the wake of Platoon” but at the same time considered unique due to its creative twist take on storytelling norms in cinema. Similarly, at the time of its’ release in 1999, Ratcatcher, Lynne Ramsay’s Glaswegian Bildungsroman was considered a development of the British neo-realist aesthetic stretching from Tony Richardson’s 1960 drama Saturday Night and Sunday Morning through to work directed by Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, respectively (French et al., 2017). As Ramsay has refined her talent with several films since, Ratcatcher has come to be understood is an altogether more sensitive and ethereal treatment of themes than any its’ antecedents. There are huge differences in these films, of course. Where Kubrick's film obstreperously observes how the desire for recognition among young men may lead to unceremonious institutionalization, Ramsay's vision quietly offers family and community as the antidote to marginalization which may protect and inoculate young boys from being devoured by government apparatus. Despite these differences, on closer inspection, it may be observed that both films break the conventions of the POV shot, both employ social and graphic blocking which accentuates the relationship between characters and their environment and both set aside sequences in which key concessions to cinematic romanticism are made in order to evoke somewhat common thematic subtexts.

In the evolving language of cinema, it is understood that POV is used to add to the audiences understanding of a specific character’s subjective experience. Usually the character in question would be a key one, a protagonist or antagonist and one which the audience already knows a great deal about (Chapman, 1986). In addition, it is widely held as part of the conventions of the POV shot that when used, it be accompanied by a reverse shot informing the audience who’s POV we have just experienced. In a key scene which ends the sequence that opens Ratcatcher, Ramsay provocatively confounds expectation by denying the audience this reverse shot and leaving the owner of the POV anonymous. As Wilson (2003) notes, 'it is never made explicit' who is watching and the impact is shocking. Charlotte O Sullivan (2012) agrees 'we are already temporarily dumbfounded, assuming our hero, our narrative centre is dead'. Wilson (2003) recognises the influence of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s ambiguous imagery on Ramsay and this would suggest that Ramsay’s anonymous POV shot in the opening frames of Ratcatcher may be inspired by Kieślowski’s watcher character in his Polish television drama series ‘Dekalog’. Played by Artur Barciś, Kieślowski’s watcher appears in eight of the ten episodes, always pictured silently observing key narrative moments for Dekalog’s protagonists’ without uttering a word or acting upon what he sees. While this character remains mysterious, some believe his presence to be Kieślowski’s depiction of a non-interventionist God. With her own development of this idea, Ramsay places the camera where a watcher might be but resists giving the audience the reverse shot that usually accompanies a POV to reveal who the watcher is and this inspired abuse of the conventions of POV effectively serves as a warning to the audience that anything can happen, even something as unceremonious as death, without spiritual, parental or administrative oversight, to the boy that society forgot.

In a similar departure from the standard use of POV, Kubrick shoots key exchanges in the sniper scene in Full Metal Jacket with the camera embodying the snipers’ perspective, a character for whom we have no insight and for whom, this shot gives us little more. This shot has in fact been widely criticized in the literature on the film as it ‘does not invite viewers to share the sniper’s thoughts and feelings’ but if we consider the theory that Kubrick’s camera personifies the U.S. government’s all- seeing eye for the duration of the film, then this POV without reference to the character’s subjectivity takes on a very different meaning consistent with the sub textual theme of an aloof and unassailable government. Consider the opening frames of Full Metal Jacket. We open with shots of several soldiers having their heads shaved but these are characters for whom we are given no back story and the jump cuts between one private and the next and the temporal space between their episodic haircuts adds to the unceremonious nature of them, telling us that they are interchangeable (Kempley, 1987). That is, in the eye of Kubrick’s camera. With this sequence, it could be argued that Kubrick is inviting the inquisitive viewer to ask who would view these soldiers as anonymous and interchangeable and one may answer, the government. As such, Kubrick is teaching the viewers that the camera’s POV will mimic an institution eye throughout the remainder of the film. It doesn't matter who they are or where they are from, whether they volunteered or were drafted. In the institution's eyes, they are equally worthless. To revert to our discussion on POV then, in this context, Kubrick’s unconventional use of the anonymous POV in the sniper scene is consistent with the lack of regard given to the enemy in warfare.

Another interesting way to view how Ramsay and Kubrick treat a common subtext may be observed in their use of social and graphic blocking to pronounce the relationship between characters and their respective environments. Full Metal Jacket is shot in 4:3 aspect ratio which was such a commonly used ratio in 1987 that it was known as 'the universal video format of the 20th century'. Kubrick described the film is his attempt to show war, warts and all and as such, the choice to shoot in this televisual ratio may be been reached for the sense of realism it would lend to the action, especially when we consider that the Vietnam war had entered U.S. consciousness through television coverage in the seventies. The most overt reference to television in the film, of course, are the Hue City interviews in which soldiers are interviews in the field by a television news crew and in this sequence, it could be argued that there are further cues to Kubrick’s camera adopting the eyes of a government institution. That is to say, those soldiers who hold the party line about the mission of their war and their glorious part in it speak to a camera which is itself visible in Kubrick’s frame whereas those soldiers expressing dissatisfaction, concern and disgust at the situation they find themselves in stare down the barrel of Kubrick's camera, breaking the fourth wall and looking right into the eye of the government institution.

The tension between compliance and defiance is subtly pronounced by the social blocking of these scenes and this tension is reflecting in the graphic blocking of the film also. In the first half of Full Metal Jacket, symmetrical geometric shapes are created through the effective use of graphic blocking and framing, Kubrick effectively boxes the soldiers inside both the aspect ratio and their special relationship to the set which accentuates the pressure to conform detailed in both the narrative and the framing but it is notable that these lines break down as the soldiers arrive in Vietnam and enter the firefight in Hue City. This disintegration of order in the blocking mirrors the break down in the core’s order and respect for the chain of command and mirrors the tension between individuality and conformity which characterizes the subtext of the film. Ramsay’s use of framing also ‘enunciates a particular set of paradoxical tensions’. These tensions are especially evident in the scene where the film’s protagonist James’ explores a building site where his family are hoping to make a new home and it pictured peaking around corners, obscured by the frame and hidden from view. This is a key example of Ramsay’s use of the frame and the character’s special relationship to it to create ‘tension at work’ as images appear as glimpses which simultaneously serve as an illustration of a developing boy, difficult to capture as he moved through fixed space, suggesting 'the ambiguity of childhood and its resistance to fixity' but consistent with Ramsay’s unconventional use of the POV shot, also suggest a boy out of sight and out of mind of any sense of government, parental or societal. This is especially interesting to note as many of the British films which preceded Ramsay were noted for their psychological realism.

Contrary to the tenets of psychological realism, however, Paul Schrader defines what he refers to as 'the transcendental style' as a more ethereal, expressive approach achieved through ascetic exacting framing and staging, relaxed and candid central performance and editing that seeks to pose questions rather than provide answers (Schrader, 2018). It is this style which characterizes Ratcatcher and much of Ramsay’s later work. For example, in that same scene in Ratcatcher where the young boy, James explores the building site, he ascends to the upper floor and through a window observed a field which in the context of both the films mise en scene and the boy’s own worldview represents a romantic impressionistic image of health, escape, space and promise. This imagery marks a notable break from the drab, oppressive mise en scene established in the rest of the film and this momentary concession to artistic romanticism represents the hope that still remains in every boy who’s alive, awake, on the move, gaining agency and young enough to still grow beyond the limitations of his environment. As such, we may view the half built housing estate which James’ explores are a proxy for his own sketched out future, one which is undetermined and the window to the wheat field as a visual representation of his own potential which may well be realised if his family are successful in moving to this house before James’ is crushed by the life on the council estate and the lack of protective oversight evoked in less idyllic earlier sequences. There is an uncanny similarity between this sequence and a much shorter but no less important progression of imagery in Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. In the film’s first act, a series of marching sequences charts the progress of the individuals soldiers as they are corralled into one cohesive unit. In the first of these sequences, the camera dollies in anticipation of the troops, giving the scene a sense of being in the moment and the viewer a sense that they are with the troops as they march and sing. Kubrick is famous for his carefully staged frames which are thought to be derivative of his his love of classical painting (Eberwein, 2010). His favourite lens was a 16mm lens which gives us that famous Kubrick wide shot, almost a fish eye lens disguised as widescreen and although much has been made of the staging and framing of his iconic frames, Full Metal Jacket was not shot with this widescreen lens and Kubrick himself is on record as believing that it is editing and not framing which is unique to film. Quoting Pudovkin when speaking to Rolling Stone in 1987, Kubrick said ‘writing, of course, is writing, acting comes from the theatre, and cinematography comes from photography, but editing is unique to film. You can see something from different points of view almost simultaneously, and it creates a new experience’. Considering this, later in the first act, the soldiers march again but Kubrick’s camera, still on a dolly, now moves counter to the action of the soldiers as they march. This gives the scene a more balletic feel and suggests that, far from the disparate group we watched marching earlier, this is now a group that has progressed to one which moves through space as one. Where, in the earlier scene, the all-seeing eye Kubrick’s camera drew them into this process, the government-eye view it represents now watches over them, cold and approvingly as they begin to conform. That said, there is a crucial tension here also which Kubrick does not ignore.

That is to say, despite the inevitability of the privates falls from grace as individuals to brain washed core members, this balletic marching scene is the first time in the course of the film’s narrative that the unit feels like one entity which, at this point in the story, is actually satisfying for them, the drill Sargent and, Kubrick appreciates, to some extent, for the viewer. For a moment, the romantic idea of being a marine is realized and to mark this moment, Kubrick cuts to an idyllic scene of the soldiers climbing obstacles at sunset while we hear the noise of their marching feet and singing continue as an audio insert. It is the relationship between these two shots, how our mind associates the images, encouraged by the overlapping audio which gives this sequence its momentary romantic potency. As such, similar to the appearance of the wheat field in Ratcatcher, this sequence may be understood as a fugacious indulgence in cinematic impressionism in an otherwise cold and incarcerating space. Werner Herzog is quoted to have said 'facts do not convey truth, that's a mistake, facts create norms, but truth creates illumination' and this distinction between fact and truth is a useful heuristic when considering how certain factual looks are employed by both directors, not to detail realty but rather to evoke it. Both Ramsay and Kubrick's creative roots lie in photography and both are interested in a certain kind of realism but evoked realism rather something more on the nose. Ramsay uses desaturated, dry colouring to mimic popular photography and television of the seventies and give her film a unique 'haptic' texture which encourages us to feel (Trotter, 2010) and the use of a telephote lens to shoot soldiers running slow motion through the mud in Full Metal Jacket similarly invites the viewer to feel the physical application required by the privates. To wit, what is most interesting about Ramsay’s window to the wheat field and Kubrick’s silhouetted obstacle climbing sequence, respectively is their momentary concession to the boundless nature of off-screen space through the sparing use of romantic images in an otherwise restrictive, oppressive on screen space. They dare us to dream in an otherwise foreboding space. It could also be argued that both films present us with protagonists who are proxies for the tabula rasa. That is to say, both films protagonists, James in Ratcatcher and Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket represent the epistemological notion of the human being as arriving without innate knowledge and so, through the course of a film’s narrative, go in search of it through experience. Where Ramsay's tabula rasa is that of the child in his formative years (Wilson, 2003), Kubrick's is that of the young man stripped to a blank slate for the purpose of reprogramming by the government.

In conclusion, while at first glance unlikely bedfellows, Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket and Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher both elicit a sympathetic view of growth, development and amorphous masculinity despite the fact that Ramsay's characters have effectively been discounted by government and Kubrick's are being surveyed by big brother's all-seeing eye. Emma Wilson (2003) refers to 'limbo' in discussing the sense of suspension which Ratcatcher exists in where Ramsay’s ‘quasi- photographic’ effectively imagery freezes key moments of emotional salience, sensitively catching characters in the edges of the gauge before, in the final frames releasing them back into their environment, away from our view, to be contemplated after the film ends. Kubrick closes Full Metal Jacket with a haunting sequence of mismatched soldiers, marching through a fiery, hellish landscape. Pramaggiore and Wallis (2011) note that, like the anonymity of the soldiers presented to us at the beginning of the film ‘because they are shown in silhouette, they all look the same’. The choice of song, the Mickey Mouse theme, is key here too as Kubrick reminds who's in hell, a bunch of immature boys. In both films, the protagonists emerge from anonymity for their story to be told before being absorbed back into namelessness at their conclusion but if Full Metal Jacket is a look, with pathos, at the dilemma of the trapped rat, Ramsay’s film reminds us of the fragility, danger and hope in the truism that the cornered rat may leap to prodigious heights.

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