This might have the best battle scene I’ve ever seen and yes I’m including Saving Private Ryan. Saving Private Ryan’s might be more of a spectacle but the emotional weight of the soldiers rushing to nearly certain doom is incredibly good.
I must compare it to All Quiet on the Western Front which while excellent is somehow much tamer. In All Quiet, the soldiers are sent to war due to the public’s misguided sense of patriotism. That patriotism at least is consistent with the information their given. In Paths of Glory, the officers responsible are all too aware of the suffering they are inflicting. And it shows the all too human reason why they do it anyway.
If anything, Dax’s moral righteousness feels almost comically out of place given the banal evil all around him. But that contrast really serves the film.
If this were anyone but Kubrick it could easily be the greatest film of a director’s career. It’s much more straightforward and “typical” that his later works, but you can see little touches of the later Kubrick style. I have to admit that in this moment I’m having a hard time fully committing to ranking any of his other films that I’ve seen above this one, even if I can definitely see more interesting aspects comparatively. The thematic throughline of this one is just so good.