An Anti-War Film for the Ages

Rating: 10/10 (17 April 2016)

The French Army calls it the Anthill. Mere kilometers away from Paris, German WWI forces have dug trenches and fortified the area for a little over a year. Gen. Paul Mireau (Macready) believes taking the Anthill is nearly impossible and says so within the first frames of Paths of Glory. Yet after the insinuation of a promotion by Gen. Broulard (Menjou), Mireau reconsiders, rationalizing and demurring such a feat of improbability for the sake of glory. Enters Kirk Douglas; cleft chin, movie-star good looks, and despite playing Col. Dax, a Frenchman, Douglas carries a signature American swagger. Surprised by the General's tactical decision, Dax nevertheless strives to carry out his orders.
Thus the wheels of Paths of Glory begin to screech and turn. The movie is infamously known not only as a damning anti-war film but as one of Kubrick's first great masterpieces in a career marked by nothing but. As an anti-war film, Paths of Glory is downright incendiary choosing hubris, human frailty and visual metaphor as a means to an end. Generals sit in a comfy château making decisions about the cannon-fodder in the trenches who are shell-shocked due to months of constant skirmishes. Those in the trenches who hold to some semblance of rank, take advantage of it to hide mistakes and keep up appearances. The end result of Mireau's gambit, which according to Dax "will weaken the French Army with heavy losses for no benefit"? So bitter and damning as to become farcical if it wasn't so unfailingly human.
Even as early as 1957, the late Stanley Kubrick displayed a mastery of his craft with a particular affinity to asymmetrical spacing, alienating long shots and mechanical tracking shots. He keeps his camera at a safe distance, robbing the audience of superfluous or unnecessary human emotions; concentrating instead on the chaotic wartime experience on an almost cosmic scale. Each 35mm frame of Mireau and Douglas coolly inspecting the foxhole huddled with frightened soldiers says more about inhumanity than can be found in the pages of a mediocre novel. The cynicism and pessimism of everything proceeding the battle is enough to make anyone revolt. Is it any wonder the film went unreleased in France for over twenty years?
But while the first tracking shots are an attack on the inhumanity of war, the scenes of the battle for the Anthill are a full frontal attack on the way Hollywood made war movies. While films like Sergeant York (1941) are drenched in patriotism, Paths of Glory's long, unforgiving battle scene dares to be cruel, emotionally complex and absurd. During an ever escalating barrage of artillery, mortar and machine gunfire, soldiers are dispatched with mechanical coldness, superiors shout out in the organized chaos while Col. Dax's story surreptitiously disappears into the ether. Meanwhile the enemy remains unseen.
As early as the forties, Douglas had been attracted by ardent bleeding-heart roles with a penchant for little-man-against-the- system melodrama. In the moments when the film veers into courtroom drama, Douglas oozes carefully controlled personal branding. Many claim that if not for Douglas's involvement, Kubrick would have shown his intellectual colors a lot earlier. Yet there's little doubt that without the interest of Kirk Douglas, Paths of Glory (twice rejected by United Artists) would cease be. While Douglas's star power does on occasion overwhelm the frame and he does chew the scenery with higher-than-thou proselytizing it feels almost like a release. It's almost as if Kubrick brings you to the edge of the abyss while Douglas warmly touches your shoulder and tells you not to jump. He's the bridge and arbiter between the entrenched studio system and the vanguard still percolating in France, raging in Japan and under-appreciated everywhere else.
Paths of Glory is a near perfect anti-war film and a high water mark for film in general. While a little stark for some, one can't help but find hope and beauty in the small moments such as when Christine Kubrick (longtime wife of the director) solemnly sings a German folk song to a squad of French troops. Douglas once called Kubrick a "talented s***," yet despite well documented friction, the two tall figures of cinema managed to make something real special here. Something too unique, too beautiful and too scornfully, maddeningly perfect to be ignored.