"The men died wonderfully!" crows the wicked, vain and corrupt French general Broulard (George Macready) as he enjoys tea and delicate pastries at General Staff HQ. No matter that they died in droves, failed to secure the objective and almost came under fire from their own artillery, they died wonderfully.
Paths Of Glory is structured around the grotesque disconnect between Macready's airy rear-echelon abstractions and the godawful reality of life in the trenches of the first world war. Down there, amid the rats, the mud and the corpses of one's friends, there is at least a sense of solidarity and honour among the doomed, and all emotions are real. But back in the General Staff's Versailles-like HQ, among the columns, frescos and sweeping staircases, the Fragonards and the Bouchers on the walls and the marble floors underfoot, the aristocrats and the officer class their faces mean, smug, scarred or fat trade ghastly obscenities about acceptable death tolls and national honour, their moral universe and patterns of thought throttled by protocol, precedent, military codes and banal social etiquette.
Continue reading...Source: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/apr/28/stanley-kubrick-paths-of-glory
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