An anti-war masterpiece

Rating: 9/10 (16 January 2017)

"Paths of Glory" is the film that officially transformed Kubrick from a talented young director to a genius in the eyes of the public. Although I consider "The Killing" an already stellar film, I see why this one would get so much love: its anti-war themes are splendidly developed in Kubrick's unforgiving way, giving the viewer every reason to keep his hopes high, but regularly smashing them in his face, showing how the world actually works and not how the classic movies would like to make us believe. The character of Dax (a performance that Kirk Douglas grows into as the movie progresses) seems to be the only reasonable person in a maddened system where human lives matter less than the career of the powerful. The natural instinct of survival (showed by the sentenced soldiers as they approach the end) is labelled as "cowardice" and reprimanded by those who are not in danger, of course. But the scene that may have moved me the most is the ending, with the French soldiers first taunting the German girl but then getting emotional as they realize that they share the human nature, and all the mad orders they follow have no meaning at all.