Screening Time: Saturday, May 13, 4:00 PM, Charles Theatre 1

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Cast: Matthew Modine, Arliss Howard, Vince D'Onofrio, Dorian Harewood, Lee Ermey, Adam Baldwin, Kevyn Major Howard

Country: USA
Year: 1987
Running Time: 116:00 minutes
Format: 35mm

Stanley Kubrick is a directing legend- some have defined the history of movies as “before Stanley and after Stanley.” There certainly was no one like him. His unique body of work is importantly marked by two war films, Paths of Glory (1957) and Full Metal Jacket (1987). When asked by one of his FMJ collaborators, the great Vietnam war correspondent Michael Herr, why he wanted to make another war movie, Kubrick responded that his first one was an anti-war movie, so FMJ one would be his only war movie.

Told in two distinct sections- boot camp, and the fight for the city of Hue, or, preparing for war and war- Kubrick wants the audience to really understand what about war makes it hell. Not because of what it does to the injured or the killed, not because of carnage and destruction, but because of what it does to the people who fight. Though set in the Vietnam era (everything was shot in London, including imported palm trees), this is a very different Vietnam era war film. This nonpolitical portrayal of war has all the hallmarks of Kubrick’s great work: beautiful though eerie cinematography, acting that seems to emerge from every scene, an umbrella of surrealness that doesn’t contradict the brutal reality. It’s a unique reflection on war from a master filmmaker.

--Jed Dietz

Presented By: Matthew Modine, Jeremy Feldbusch (Home Front), Marc Steiner

Matthew Modine, has has made over 40 films with some of the best directors working in film- Demme, Altman, Pakula, to name a few. Modine has won innumerable awards, even leading an ensemble in Streamers to an unprecedented Best Actor Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival. He has directed theater and short films (two of which screened at MFF 2004) Matthew has published a copy of his Full Metal Jacket journal and photographs, and he has just returned from London where he completed a run of Arthur Miller’s play Resurrection Blues, under the direction of Robert Altman.