“Gentlemen of the court, there are times when I'm ashamed to be a member of the human race and this is one such occasion.”

After being blown away by 2001: A Space Odyssey, I decided to watch another Stanley Kubrick movie, this time being something completely different from his early days. I haven’t seen many movies from the pre-1970s that I’ve loved all that much, even widely praised films; however, Paths of Glory was certainly an exception. This film emotionally gripped me in ways that other films from the same era simply haven’t.

I didn’t read the premise before watching it, so it was safe to say that this was quite a bit different from what I expected. The first act was pretty much what I thought the entire film was going to be, being a brutal depiction of war, and it certainly is, but not in the way I initially thought. Instead, Paths of Glory focuses the rest of its runtime on the dehumanization that often occurs in wartime.

After a failed offensive to take over an anthill, three soldiers are selected for trial because of the failure, being accused of cowardice and defying orders. However, each soldier’s failure was due to an unforeseen incident or, quite simply, the task at hand being completely impossible. During their trials, they are unfairly accused and faced with the possibility of a death penalty.

The leading performance in the film, and easily the best performance, comes from Kirk Douglas, who plays Colonel Dax. Dax is really the only person who cares about the accused men, and the only one who publicly acknowledges the absurdity of their charges. He’s a character very easy to empathize with simply because he kind of has the same thought process that the audience does in a way. Where the other leaders seemingly only want to see these men face punishment to cover themselves, Dax is the complete opposite.

Just seeing Dax try to get this situation resolved whilst also having to maintain his professionalism is portrayed remarkably well by Douglas. He rarely ever loses self-control, and honestly really doesn’t throughout the film, and so seeing him constantly have to keep himself composed is by far the most impressive aspect of Paths of Glory as far as acting goes. This was the first film that I’d seen Douglas in, and I already see why he is such a big name in the history of cinema.

The soldiers are perhaps even easier to empathize with for obvious reasons, as well as some of the writing of the movie as well. They all react completely differently to what is going on, which creates an incredibly interesting dynamic between them. Two of the three in particular get some pretty emotionally heavy moments. While I wouldn’t say that any of their performances were all that remarkable, their characters certainly were to the point where it surprisingly didn’t matter as much as one would think.

The film’s ending is probably the best part, too, and leaves you with a lot to think about. Dax’s handling of everything by the end makes him an even more compelling character, and the very final scene that you get with him is very subtle, at least for him as a character, and caps off the story in an extremely powerful way. It’s not an ending that I see myself forgetting anytime soon, which is surprising to say because it’s not really an ending that’s all that extreme on paper.

2001 already convinced me what a generational talent Kubrick was as a director, but Paths of Glory showed me that he had that talent very early on in his career. The beginning has plenty of very long takes that were amazing, especially for the time, especially the sequence where the soldiers try to take over the anthill. That’s not where it stops, though, as the rest of this movie still has plenty of long takes as well, which might even be more impressive because of how much they demand out of the actors, and these were also executed very well. I don’t really have much to say when it comes to the cinematography, as I’m not as comfortable yet with that aspect of filmmaking when it comes to black and white movies, but what I can say is that this is easily the best black and white movie I’ve ever seen, and it’s not even close.

It’s definitely nowhere near as good as 2001, but this was yet again another great film I watched by Kubrick. I can’t wait to check out more of his work.