-- On the abrupt shift after Pyle's suicide: I regard it as like what
dramaturgist Oscar Brownstein called a Perception Shift -- an
intentional dislocation of the audience's attention from one style to
another, with the purpose of forcing a deeper attention to underlying
themes or motives. Up until that moment, we'd been lead to expect a
certain kind of anti-war film (though we come into the theatre for
the most part knowing about Strangelove and Paths of Glory, we don't
know exactly what to expect), and the comic tone, etc. sets our
sights a certain way. Then, suddenly, we are dumped from the middle
of ACO into Paths of Glory, as it were; and the hour or so we've just
seen is altogether & immediately transformed into something deeper
(rather than gradually, through exposition, for example). The effect
is breathtaking.
(G.A.)
-- Like HAL, Pyle ends up turning against his "creators," in this
case the Drill Sergeant. Pyle doesn't shoot Joker when he has the
chance because he knows that Joker isn't responsible for the system;
he's just as enslaved to it as Pyle himself is.
(J.M.)
-- The "club that's made for you and me" could very well be the
Marines. In this way, maybe Kubrick is saying that the military makes
it possible to ESCAPE growing up, in other words they become a "gang"
a la CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and release their aggressions into acts of
officially sanctioned violence, in a way "absolving" them from their
crimes and thus preserving their childlike innocence.
(J.M.)
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