It is tempting to argue that Kubrick’s Paths of Glory is a highly effective statement about the horror and futility of war, and to a large extent it is. The 1957 film is very “ahead of its time” in challenging military conventions and basic ideas of heroism. If anything in fact defines the film, it is the powerful force of seeing how war disregards human impulses, and that heroism and cowardice are concepts not necessarily fair or applicable in the madness that is war. At the same time, and ironically, this power is weakened by Kubrick’s style and ways of storytelling. That is, he veers to ambiguity and subtlety, allowing the viewer to take in the scenes and reach their own conclusions. Then, there is an inherent distance in emotional terms between Kubrick and his material, one reinforced by his unusual and almost “investigatory” film techniques. Paths of Glory remains a strong statement about the impossibility of even understanding a fixed morality in war, but its artistic quality then diffuses the impact.
In a very real sense, the entire film exists as a bitter condemnation of war, in terms of war being a scenario guided, not by good and evil, but by various agendas all too cold and human. The order for the men to take the German Anthill is established from the start as suicidal, and this allows for the entire film to explore the blatant victimization of men under impossible circumstances, and in which morality is a false construction. To emphasize this, Kubrick’s movie has a stark look, not unlike a documentary, and even the black and white filming seems deliberately stripped of color, to underscore the cruelty of the story. Then, the actors are never glamorized in any way; scars, beards, and hollow eyes are all too real. Most of the film has no musical score; instead, Kubrick relies on military drums to supply a musical motif, and to chilling effect. Everything here seems directed to counter any sentimentalizing of men in war, and war itself. It is all gritty and ugly, and this greatly enhances the effect of the other unusual aspect, that of soldiers constantly displaying both extreme emotion and deadened faces. Nonetheless, the story itself weakens the impact, in that it is uncertain if the film is making a statement about war or about one corrupt event in one war.
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"Paths of Glory Movie Review".
The film is marked by Kubrick’s unique visual style and cinematography, which emphasizes a central point and linear, or expanding, development of the visual. For example, Dax is seen walking in between two lines of terrified soldiers just before battle begins, and the scene runs for a full minute; there is a hypnotic effect in his following the path between the men. The same effect occurs late in the film as Ferol is led to his place before the execution squad. The camera opens on the massive building in the center, fixing the monolithic element in a symbolic way, then Ferol cries as he winds his way between the soldiers regarding him in different ways. Once again, the camera follows a long and curving path, bringing the viewer to a sense of the totality of the scene and the smaller elements within it. All the cinematography is as well “theatrical” in a certain way. The editing is clipped and commanding, and not a scene or moment is taken beyond what is needed to present each reality. The viewer gets the idea that Kubrick is seeking to create almost a silent movie, so intense is the emphasis on space, faces, and landscapes.
Ultimately, the movie offers a direct message about morality in the form of Dax’s disgust and attack of the absurd “trial” of the soldiers charged with cowardice. It is more than valid because, at this point, the viewer has seen men consistently used as pawns in a deadly game. Then, Kubrick’s simultaneously elegant and hard style is unrelenting in supporting this lack of morality. At the same time, and as noted, this same artistic quality creates a distance between story and viewer making the point obscure; it so distances the reality of the events, empathy itself is removed to an extent. On a personal level, I found this quality all the more impactful, but I believe that audiences in general would be more inclined to see the film as condemning only one violation of humanity, rather than as the statement about war it actually is. That said, there can be no question that Paths of Glory was and is a groundbreaking treatment of war, tossing aside Hollywood stereotypes to expose the nightmare of war as inevitably defying morality itself.
