The 'Paths of Glory' Lead But to The Grave!

Rating: 9/10 (22 April 2015)

Right at the beginning of Stanley Kubrick's World War I epic 'Paths of Glory', we are placed right amongst a troop of worn-out French soldiers, led by Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas, in splendid form), dug into their trenches and their morally corrupt commanders – both trying to hold off the Germans. Exasperated by the stalemate, the French supreme commander orders Colonel Dax's troops to do the impossible – launch a suicidal assault on a strategic hill – the Anthill. Even though he thinks the idea sounds insane, Dax is in no position to decline the directive and commands his men to charge to their likely doom. The soldiers are indeed like ants on the Anthill, stomped mercilessly by larger unseen forces. When the operation ends in inevitable retreat, their commanding general, himself largely responsible for the fiasco, wants an entire company to face execution. France needs a sacrifice, as if it hadn't bled enough. Eventually, three men are chosen at random to face court-martial for 'cowardice', as an example to others. The decision brings Dax, himself a defense lawyer in peacetime, into conflict with his superior officers, as he tries to assert reason during wartime for those on trial against an apathetic panel of military judges, even as the three men await execution. Can Colonel Dax save the men from the trumped-up charges of pusillanimity and eventually from the firing squad?
Over the years, Kubrick's WWI saga has attained a status commensurate with its meticulous craftsmanship and unfortunately timeless message. The movie is visually alluring from the start, whether it is when the camera is patrolling the trenches during the frighteningly vivid warfare or pacing the courtroom during the trial scenes in the latter half. Corrosively antiwar, the film is indeed pointed, but its contempt is directed not at war per se but rather at the manner in which war is conducted. For the movie is fundamentally an attack on bureaucracy and its attendant rigidity, hypocrisy and cumulative ineffectiveness. If that sounds dull or, worse, didactic, rest assured that in the hands of Stanley Kubrick, it is no such thing. Kubrick almost scornfully illustrates the consequences of unchecked ambition and mass complacency, as high- ranking officers calmly plot the basest turpitude, far from the muck of the trenches. It serves as a reminder both of his extraordinary formal virtuosity and his powers as a satirist.
With Paths of Glory, Kubrick sits himself down to brood on the meaning of 'courage' and 'honor' in war. Decades later, it continues to be hailed as a devastating body-blow that reminds us that the true horror of war is the endless futility of it.