Nowhere did I say this or even imply it. With Kubrick, whether you watch a movie of his for the first time and love it or hate it, it will invariably get better with time and repeat viewings. It's just the way his movies work. In five years, having watched it two or three more times, you may not consider it the GOAT war movie, but whatever you think of it overall, whatever initial criticisms you still feel mar the film and/or whatever new criticisms you pick up along the way, your general sense of the film will very likely be higher than it is right now. That's all I said.
As for the stuff you're wrong about: You don't need time and more viewings to fix that. I can just tell you what you're wrong about right here.
I will teach you
Perfect example: You're wrong, and here's why.
Ok, I guess I shouldn't jump the gun. First, I have to make sure I'm thinking of the same scene you are. Are you referring to the tracking shot while "Surfin' Bird" is playing? If not, then nothing I say here will matter and I'll make a subsequent post in response to the correct scene. If so, then you're wrong in terms of where you're directing your criticism. Your criticism presupposes that Kubrick intended his tracking shot to bring us into the film and make us feel like we were there with them in the heat of battle. But that's not what Kubrick was going for with that shot.
First off, let's underscore the fact that Kubrick needle drops "Surfin' Bird" right after an intense combat sequence that unfolded with natural sound. The point is to be jarring and highlight the strange confluence of the real and the surreal (one of Kubrick's recurring themes and why any invocation of realism in relation to Kubrick must be qualified). As for the tracking shot itself, it's important to point out that, technically, it's a second-layer tracking shot. That is, Kubrick's tracking shot
is tracking a tracking shot. The documentary crew is there looking to get their "cool" war footage. It's their idea to track down the line. Kubrick's camera, meanwhile, isn't looking to capture the reality of combat by going down the line of soldiers. Rather, Kubrick is calling attention to the documentary crew and how ludicrous the entire spectacle is, from the zombified soldiers just staring at the camera because they've been in the shit so long, to the medics trying to get the injured/dead soldiers to helicopters without bumping into the camera, and finally to the "stars" who can't help hamming it up.
A famous line of Kubrick's, which he told Jack Nicholson while shooting
The Shining, was that his goal was never to photograph reality but to photograph the photograph of reality. Nowhere in Kubrick's entire career is this logic more explicit than this sequence from
Full Metal Jacket where Kubrick is literally filming people filming people. Kubrick absolutely strove for realism in
Full Metal Jacket, but realism for Kubrick is a starting point, it's not the finish line. Kubrick always looks to move beyond the "merely" realistic and penetrate into deeper thematic territory.
That shot is one such example.
