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Rating: It's easy to fill your mouth with words like homeland, honor, glory, fidelity, loyalty, respect.
Too easy for those pulling the strings to decide strategies, manage public opinion by saying everything is fine, that the war is being won on all fronts, that casualties are contained and anticipated, that their lives will save others, and so on.
The division of tasks and hierarchies in the military sphere often faithfully reflects a preordained social distinction, with a few men deciding what to do with the multitude, mostly formed by men recruited from the poor in the suburbs, those Charlie Sheen in "Platoon" called the heart of America. Officers full of arrogance and driven solely by their ambitions, always ready to use the rhetoric of loyalty to the flag to sacrifice their men on the altar of their personal glory. All this from the warmth and comfort of their rich command rooms.
"Paths of Glory" is a great film in which the usual military logics, which do not consider the inviolability of every single human life, are sharply criticized, as well as the feelings of soldiers on the front line. It does not matter if an order given is objectively impossible, on the balance, that order is worth much more than the existence of the entire regiment.
In Kubrick's work, there is no visible enemy in the form of a foreign army, the real war is fought within the friendly army that shows no love and respect for those sons who do not carry out the commands imposed on them successfully. For them, there can be nothing but the death penalty for disloyalty and treason. Dax (played by a majestic Kirk Douglas), colonel of the 71st regiment, embodies common sense and humanity attempting to thwart the injustice of this warfare practice consolidated over centuries. But, although representing the multitude of soldiers fighting and dying in the trenches, he is a lone man.
Loyalty and honor are worth much more than the life of a son of the homeland. Loyalty and honor must prevail even if it means executing an infirm person. If I may allow myself a small personal consideration, this, in my opinion, represents one of the peaks of brutality that man often stains himself with. Caring, healing or, in any case, keeping a condemned person alive, only to ritually execute them (a fairly common practice in the U.S.A.), is an ethically unacceptable paradox. The only moment of comfort, in the destructive apotheosis of war, is given by the sweet and melancholic song of a young German girl, a comfort that reconciles the spirits of all the soldiers.
Do you think it matters if that song comes from those who have been imposed on us as our enemies?
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