Very good. But...great?

Rating: Null/10 (18 December 2002)

I enjoyed Paths of Glory well enough, but am surprised, for instance, that it ranks so high in the IMDB top 250....
I see it as a formative film for Kubrick. You can see the beginnings of his special emerging talent and interest; naming the names and delivering the dramatic goods without a bunch of extraneous matter; addressing those of us whose dramatic needs won't be satisfied by an appeal to worn-out and questionable moral assumptions endemic to film up to then (and still afflicting much of film today).
However, there were problems. It appeared to me that Kubrick was unable to transcend certain encumbrances of the medium of the time; character acting, "stage" dialog and exaggeration, "pulling of the punches" in some of the writing and development.
Another thing: I think of a line from "Manon of the Spring", where Montand's evil, culpable character says: "That would be just like [another villager]; to confess someone else's sins [to the priest]!" And rightfully so. And I can't help but feel this particular concern taints "Paths". At its heart, it is very much a cinematic confession of the "sins" of someone else (the French). The fact that the story holds some promise of universal application doesn't to my thinking sufficiently blunt that core reality.
*** Spoilers Ahead ***
Another thing I couldn't banish from my mind as I watched was, as reprehensible as the depicted military courtroom procedure appears to our eyes, that it was a heck of a lot more than many Frenchmen received during WWI, when court martial procedures were very often hastily convened in bombed out buildings with the dust still in the air, based on flimsy "evidence"; often patently subjective judgement calls on the fighting mettle of the accused; followed by throwing the "convicted" up against the nearest crumbling wall and knocking them down with no more ceremony than taking a dump. Heck, that's war, and it's largely unwritten and undocumented. Which reminds me; when Douglas's character says "I'm incensed that there is no stenographic record of this proceeding!"...then what did the writers base their script upon? I do realize the above *does* describe much about the process shown in "Paths"; the General was taking unfair advantage of the subjectivity taken for granted in determining the inner states of the accused, and to the extent this came from base promotional motives on the part of the general, it's a crime against humanity of unspeakable proportions, and I'm glad the story is being aired. But it's just a drop in the bucket of the insanity of real trench warfare. I couldn't dispense with that distracting thought during the movie.
All the scenes in the cell where the condemned were held were fantastic, and show where Kubrick was headed in his career. Great writing, presaging "Sparticus". Not all the writing in the movie was up to that standard (though close).
I didn't get the point behind the last scene, where the German girl sings and the French soldiers are deeply moved. It was a great scene (great!), but I couldn't for the life of me achieve the integration of that scene with the rest of the movie, and I consider myself perfectly amenable to doing the bit of work to make those kinds of connection on behalf of well-intentioned filmmakers. If there was a spiritual connection, I didn't quite see it. I think it was an end-game botch. When you look at the story, you realize that there was no resolution possible, because you can't bring the executed soldiers back to life. But Kubrick & Co. needed to find a resolution anyway. Perhaps the dawning investigation into Gen. Paul Mireau's shennanigans and Dax's vehement denial of self-aggrandizing motives should have been left ringing in our ears. I don't know. I understand why they had to have *something*...
In summary. See this movie; it's good, and an important step in Kubrick's work. Decide for yourself if it all comes together as a moral fable.