Devastating anti-war polemic from Kubrick

Rating: 8/10 (17 February 2010)

My dad raves about this film and he's rarely wrong in his opinion about movies so I finally settled down to watch this taped-at-Christmas movie after putting it off as a deferred anticipated pleasure for long enough.
It's self-evident that in the world in which we live, war films will always be topical and it can be difficult for film-makers to get across the requisite pacifist message with originality in an overcrowded field. Indeed I'm no great lover of war films per se, bludgeoned too much about the head I guess by the likes of John Wayne, Audie Murphy and others of that ilk over-simplifying and grossly simplifying the very complex human emotions which drive or in some cases hinder the ranks of ordinary men (and although not in this film, women) called up to fight for their country in the prime of their lives.
Kubrick chooses to focus in on a seemingly minor uprising in the French army on the German Front in the First World War, which no doubt then, as now, would get buried away in the "Classified" files in case its exposure damaged troop morale but goes far deeper in analysing the actions of ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances with not all displaying what Hemingway termed grace under pressure. This is actually as it should be and draws the viewer's empathy as we see that all life truly is here in the fictional drama. As for the ivory-tower generals who unfeelingly treat their exhausted and dispirited underlings like sacrificial pawns to the slaughter, Kubrick delivers to them his greatest opprobrium, highlighting their self-serving, manipulative and downright callous traits, always passing the buck away from their desk.
From several scenes which etch themselves deep in the memory, I'll highlight two for brevity's sake - firstly where Kubrick completes the lengthy and engrossing if dispiriting court-martial scene by cutting away from its expected climax by moving straight onto a scene with the now-condemned men already awaiting their execution - completely excising the delivering of a clichéd verdict scene, so much of a foregone conclusion is it in the "kangaroo court" against which Kirk Douglas' character rages in vain. Kubrick then rounds off the film with the deeply moving extended scene where you fear for the safety of a captured pretty young German girl, made to sing for her supper and who knows what afterwards you fear, by a clamouring crowd of no doubt sex-starved troops, who with Douglas waiting outside to intercede, collectively draw back from the brink of primitivism as they one by one realise that this girl could be their daughter, sister or wife, as helplessly caught up in the madness of war as they are.
The acting from top to bottom is terrific, Douglas brilliant in a non-action role, wholly immersed in his character's moral dilemma with George McReady and especially Adolphe Menjou, heretofore considered by me as a lightweight comedic actor, ably displaying the venality and shiftiness of the powers that be. The rest of the acting by Kubrick's ensemble as the battle-weary soldiers is also superb. The black and white cinematography hits home too in its convincing depiction of life in the trenches.
This is a great film conveying the universal anti-war message with rare subtlety and conviction.