Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 film Paths of Glory follows the story of Col. Dax (Kirk Douglas) as he attempts to defend the lives of three French soldiers when they are sentenced to death for exhibiting cowardice in the face of the enemy. When Col. Dax is ordered by Gen. Mireau to lead his French soldiers in an attack on a heavily defended German outpost, nicknamed “The Ant-hill”, Dax reluctantly follows those orders. When the attack fails and Dax’s men retreat, Gen. Mireau and his commander, Gen. Broulard, deem it necessary to make an example to rest of the military and execute three soldiers from the retreating force. Dax attempts to take the bullet for the men but it is to no avail. Col. Dax then sets off to prove that these three men were not cowards and deserved to live.
As a Kubrick film, Paths of Glory’s narrative seems rather straightforward. Stylistically, the film has all your standard Kubrick-ian elements. The fluid camera, the zooms and the wit. As an anti-war film, Kubrick managed to take all of the tropes of the classic war film and flip them on their head. In Col. Dax, we still have the handsome and noble commander bravely running into harm’s way, but the direction he runs is not towards the enemy. Col. Dax is fighting his own chain of command, his own country. He fights for his men, who he led into an impossible battle and are now facing death. You can feel the strain of this on Dax throughout the film. Early on he attempts to convince his commanders to put him in front of the firing squad. When that is shot down he immediately volunteers to defend his men in court. He fights for these men knowing in his heart that if he had refused the attack order from the beginning, his men would not be facing their own mortality.
The message the film sends out is clear. War is futile. Whether you agree or disagree with that statement, Kubrick makes a very good argument to support it. Throughout the film we see examples of the futility to resist the futility to fight. In the opening scene, Gen. Mireau refuses to attack the Anthill, but is eventually swayed by the fact that if he doesn’t, someone else will. Dax finds himself in the same situation when Mireau passes down the order to him. During the meat of the film, Dax does everything in his power to secure the three soldiers lives, but in the end they are put up against the firing squad and executed. Even when Dax manages to prove that Mireau had attempted to fire on his own men, there is still no feeling of victory. No one wins in this film. The gears of war just continue churning. The somber final scene of the film tells the whole story. French soldiers, torn by battle, have a moment to reflect on all things while being serenaded by a beautiful German captive. It is only a moment however, as soon these men will be pushed back out onto the battlefield once again.
Stanley Kubrick presents us with a solid and well-crafted story of bravery, cowardice, sacrifice and failure. As depressing as it sounds, the film is still an engaging and reflective film that shows us the futility of war and, depending on how you may read it, the futility of life.
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