Not what it used to be.

Rating: 4/10 (24 December 2004)

I was very disappointed by this film, given the accolades it generally receives.
It's not a terrible film, but it seems to me that it probably gained its reputation by dint of the fact that it had an original and very daring take on the military for its day. Obviously it is a matter of personal taste, but for me, I think it wrong to call a film "great" when its "greatness" is closely tied to the particular period in which it was first released. Some films are very much of their time, and "Paths of Glory" seems to me to be one of them. In this day and age, a movie that basically says "war is hell, and many of the men involved in making war are immoral and commit evil acts for selfish reasons; these men appear particularly awful when compared with those courageous men who behave nobly in the face of war" doesn't have the shock value that it did 50 years ago.
Given the lesser impact of this larger message, it is easier to see the seams and flaws in other aspects of the film. To a great extent, the story seems simplistic. The villains are terribly villainous and the victims are terribly noble. We know from the first 2 or 3 scenes everything we are every going to know about the nature of the primary characters. No one really grows or changes. Instead, the story plays out mechanically. The acting is not bad, but it's a bit old-fashioned and stage-y. Similarly, the technical aspects of the trench and battle scenes, while very good for the time, have a dated quality that undercuts the viewer's involvement in the film. Even for a kangaroo court, the trial scene is silly in the grandest tradition of bad, illogical Hollywood trial scenes. (For example, the defendants are being tried for retreating in defiance of their orders. Yet, when one defendant mentions that he retreated because he was ordered to, no one, not even the noble Colonel trying to defend him, picks up on that fact, i.e. that he was, in fact, OBEYING orders.) In the final scene, a captured German girl is paraded and sexually demeaned on stage in front of a group of rowdy soldiers who seem likely to jump her; instead she's asked to sing a song and the soldiers begin to cry and hum along like the nuns backing up Maria in "The Sound of Music." I recognize that this is a movie and that perhaps it was a more innocent time, but in a movie that purports to show us the nasty reality of war, I found it more silly than affecting for Kubrick to suggest that this scenario would end in choral tears rather than assault.
I'm not taking issue with the themes of this film, which are as relevant today as they ever were. Nor am I saying the movie is worthless today. But I am simply unsure that it deserves an on-going reputation as a GREAT film. Some films are born great and stay great, other become great over time. But some films may be born great and then gently fade away -- like old soldiers.