Paths of Glory (1957) | Review

 9/July/2022. Watched. 

 My rating: 8.5/10. 

 Stanley Kubrick has always been one of those directors whose filmography I've been pushing off for the longest time. I talked about the reason behind it in the piece I wrote about Bergman's Persona (1966); the fact that I wish to appreciate them as much as everybody else. Thankfully, I've now shed that worrisome trait and now I'm ready to confront all films head on. 

 Paths of Glory is my fourth Kubrick film. I can't remember whether the first one was The Shining (1980) or 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) (I'd wager on TS being the first). Then, after a two years gap, I watched Full Metal Jacket (1987) on the 8th of April, 2020; by this point I had begun writing reviews on Letterboxd, hence the exact date. Its 9th of July, 2022, and once again after a dry spell of two years I plunge into his movies.

 POG tells the true dramatized story of three soldiers who were court-martialed and were charged with cowardice, all because of the foolish commands of the higher-ups. Kirk Douglas, whom I last saw in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), plays Col. Dax, of the French army who tries his best to save his men.

 The film begins with credits with white glow around the text, the sort you see in movies from the Citizen Kane era; 1940s. Because of that, and the way the actors spoke and the way the scenes were blocked, the way it's scored, the flick feels ten years older than it really is (1957). Rather Hitchcockian. When you look at this film and then look at Full Metal Jacket, its unbelievable how much Kubrick was able to evolve the age.

 It's sets did hinted at a tight budget. I don't mean to say that their quality was subpar, but what I mean to say is that they were quite economical. The trenches, the halls, the wires, most of the frames use darkness to lend themselves to infinity. To make the world feel real, landscape shots are put in place and the most lavish the sets ever get are in the halls in which Dax talks with his superiors or in which aristocrats participate in ball dances while young men tango with death on the front line.

 Young men. A gripe that I've with World War movies is that they cast actors in their 30s, 40s and 50s as soldiers. Most of the soldiers who volunteered or were conscripted were very young, barely men; 17, 18, 19, 20 year old boys. Many of them hadn't even begun shaving yet. And in the history of warfare, that's always been the case. The "elders", the "wise" men, the leaders encourage their sons to go die in the wars. For glory, for king, for country. 

 In one very tense scene, Col. Dax in an argument with his General quotes Samuel Johnson; "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel" I find it to be so true. Fanatical patriotism and pride in one's own race and religion can be observed in the current political climate of India. And its frustrating to see the idiocy of these self proclaimed virtuous beings. All over the social media, on my feeds, in my friend list, I can't go a day without witnessing such behavior. It makes me sad, because they're my friends, family, and the fact that they've been so indoctrinated by social media, which acts as an echo chamber, clearly skews their perspective. I'm certainly virtue signalling right now, even though I don't mean to.

 That's the thing, innit? You can't change anyone's mind once it's made up. I've seen people write "Brahman, "Thakur", "Muslim" in their Instagram bios. And each time I wanna ask them, "Is that where your personality ends? Is that where your whole being ends? Is that all you are, a made up category that you've boxed yourself into?" And when because of your own foolishness you end up discussing it, they get incredibly aggressive and start using abusive ad hominem. It sours the relationship. They value a belief more than a relationship. Humans don't like to be wrong. Which is understandable, because once upon a time, in the jungle, being wrong meant death. People need to stop marrying their ideas.

  The loss of empathy is the greatest casualty of war and this effect can be seen reproduced on the battlefields of social media; the place where we're bombarded with opinions and "news" and virtue signalling and pretense and the fake relationships. 

 Coming back to the film which was banned in France until 1975 for it's critique of the French army, the shot which I must mention here is when Dax falls back to the trenches to encourage the men who stayed behind to proceed. The camera moves with him with the trench walls shifting on the sides. Dead men lay around with their bayonets. Above, a few shells drop and dirt and smoke puffs up in clouds and one of the dead men blinks and flinches at them. He got scared whilst dying. The same could be said about the many men who fought in the wars. Terror eats them hollow like a webbed fly.

 And I don't think that the blink was a mistake either, because Kubrick is the sort of guy who shoots a million takes until he gets it right. That whole sequence, especially the first shot, is the money shot.

 This paragraph contains a spoiler. The three prisoners are executed at the end I was fully expecting Douglas to save the day because of the film's 1940s' look. And the bar scene at the end where the French soldiers are shown as uncivilized savages as they harass a young German woman and force her to sing. But once she starts singing and the boys fall silent and soon begin humming with her and welling up with tears, the audience realizes that the barbarous behavior is but a facade under which they've concealed their empathy. Their humanity. For there is no place for sentimentality in the battlefield.  

 The soldiers' tears act both as the evidence of the goodness within and the only catharsis the film provides us with.

 Before I end this piece, I must say that Kirk Douglas is the man! So cool. He reminds me of Steve McQueen.

 Paths of glory is a very literary film, not only because it was adapted from Humphrey Cobb's novel of the same name, but also because Stanley Kubrick is a director with literary sensibillities. His films feel like going through some prestigious prose.