Ready to kill some Germans?

Rating: 10/10 (7 October 2015)

Observe how simple percussion is used in Kubrick's Paths of Glory to build tension. Three men creep out in the dead of night on a reconnaissance mission. There is only sparse moonlight to guide them, brief flares illuminated the corpse strewn battlefield. The uneven bass drum beats sound again and again, while the pattering of the snare mimics their slow progress, sliding over dirt and blood and mud. Then with a sudden cut and a clattering of the cymbals, a Lieutenant has killed his own man in a fit of cowardice. Later, the slow and steady drum beats again lead us through the progressions of an execution by firing squad. It is painfully slow and elaborate, sacrificial like, the way they determinedly prop up the wounded body and dehumanise him. We wait agonisingly for reprieve, for the general to intervene, and do not get it.
This film is concerned with two distinct worlds. One is the bureaucratic higher ups, the generals and commanding officers who remain spotless in the face of such atrocities. The others are those nameless soldiers who are treated as a number; 100 yards for 1000 men. As we track General Mireau through the grimy trenches, he remains quite physically and mentally distant from the men he so heroically commends. They flinch as explosions nearly breach the trenches every now and again; Mireau hardly notices, because he will be soon back in the comfort of his office. Georg Krause captures the setting in all its drab, freezing and gray misery; there are no fancy angles, no playing with depth of field. One shell-shocked soldier does not respond quite as heroically as he would like, looking off camera as he shows symptoms of cracking his hard persona. He is reprimanded and dismissed; soldiers are not meant to act this way.
One man ventures into both world, the leading figure in Colonel Dax, played with steel by Kirk Douglas. He is the absolute moraliser, heroic and brave, but he is only one man. In an extended sequence, he leads the regiment over the trenches and into a suicide mission. The camera tracks him in a wide angle as he brandishes a small pistol and futilely blows a whistle, easily outmatched by the explosions of blood and dirt and shrapnel, as dead bodies crumple all around and bullets hiss pass ears with a metallic sound. Mireau watches from afar with binoculars, bewildered by why they are retreating. Dax knows these horrors, and they are the basis for that great impassioned monologue in the courthouse, where he pleads to superiors who have not experienced the trenches to spare these 'cowardly' men. The only brave man is a dead man, the prosecutor snaps. They are of a different world; no better visualised than that long tracking shot of Broulard which displays the lavish dance and banquet in stark contrast to what we have witnessed. These are the men who easily rationalise the lives of soldiers and calculate as if they were empty faces, the men who think of promotions, not lives spared.
Dax is far too conventional for Kubrick's taste, which is perhaps why his protests and actions are ultimately unavailing. He is stoic in his futility, unblinking and all seeing - whereas the camera always presents Mireau from the outside, immaculately dressed and self-important (notice the lovely little protest he at first gives, then easily is swept aside: "What is my ambition compared to that? My men come first..."), we are immersed in Dax's POV. He sees every tremble and flinch of the soldiers he commands, and does not want to go ahead with this mission. He does find a small consolation; he forces Roget to face his crimes, and in doing so exposes a rather meek apology, too little too late.
A rabble of soldiers gather in a bar. They are drunk and rowdy, and even more so when a teary and clearly uncomfortable German girl is ushered onto stage from them to ogle. They jeer and make lewd requests, ridiculing her for her gender and nationality. This is a young Christiane Kubrick who delivers a heartbreaking scene; she stutters but somehow manages to quell the noise, urging them to hum along to a German folk song. Here is a brief moment of shared humanity. Oh how swiftly it will be taken away.