A masterpiece to never be forgotten.

Rating: 10/10 (11 December 2011)

Paths of Glory-****- A Masterpiece- Directed by: Stanley Kubrick. Written by: Stanley Kubrick, Calder Willingham, Jim Thompson, Starring: Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, Adolphe Menjou, George Macready, Wayne Morris, Richard Anderson, Timothy Carey, Suzanne Christian, Bert Freed.
Stanley Kubrick's second masterpiece after The Killing follows an insane general who sends his men on a suicide mission during WWI. When the men ultimately fail, he charges three men to represent the force and be executed for cowardice much to Douglas' disgust.
This film is the first of his that directly represents his recurring theme of dehumanization. Kubrick is not making a common war film that promotes battle, but his film is less straightforward in the fact that we do not learn whether or not Kubrick is for or against war. Are Kubrick's speculations that of a warmonger or a pacifist? He never answers those questions for us, but the effect he creates is a terrifying sense of realistic horror.
He shows us how much military and war takes away the thing that makes us human. The general is barely a human, but is programmed as a warmonger. He represents the loss of humanity, his very character makes us shiver because he is a character we are used to, but seeing it in a form of art develops reactions we normally would not have. This film strips away the military mentalities and reveals the soldiers and the generals as they really are. We see multiple reactions from the characters.
We see acts of cruelty, cowardice, and sometimes even sadism amongst the soldiers. We also see acts of bravery and compassion amongst them. Kubrick reveals true character and the results are sometimes not quite what we might want them to be of the soldiers, which reveals our inner feelings. Our responses define the way we look at war and cowardice. Some people sit through with an iron face, some look away, some cry in pity, and some may even laugh at the sheer cowardice of the soldiers about to be executed. These reactions are often disturbing and Kubrick brings them out of us without being sadistic in violence. Kubrick knows his audience and he understands the reactions, so there are little feelings of self-pity when a sadistic reaction is provoked by a scene of cowardice or a scene of cruelty.
The genius of the movie is how Kubrick gets to mechanical reactions as well as emotional reactions to his subject matter. His masterful storytelling is neither sentimental nor nihilistic but it brings out both of those feelings from us. It's because we sometimes do not know the way we should react to what is going on. We are confused by the way the film presents war with such searing honesty and symbolism.