Paths of glory

Paths of glory

Introduction

Stanley Kubrick's “Paths of Glory” which was produced in year 1957, is known as the masterful, toughened, typical anti-war film that narrates the story of World War 1. The director has produced several films before, but this film was his tremendous success that won him several accolades and critics from the film fraternity (Tucker, 2005). The name of the film, in reality is sarcastic and out of place, mainly because war is by no means a “path of glory” and this notion was supported by a famous English poet “Thomas Gray's Elegy” as according to the poet as paths of glory in war directly leads individual to the path of grave.

This was directors one of the best film, but because of its extreme, controversially offensive and grave evaluation of French army insincere and ceremonial establishment that heartlessly criticize and sacrifice the live of three guiltless and randomly selected officers that were given punishment under the charges of coward behavior in the battle field. Because of this content, the film was not allowed to released in cinemas across France and other countries and as a result face enormous loss at the box office (Thompson, 2012).

The plot of the film mainly located around the channel of World War I's western border, in which the honorable French Colonel Dax contains with an uphill task, of motivating and leading troops of tired, under practiced soldiers. The colonel was instructed to march towards “Ant Hill” a greatly equipped piece of soil controlled by apparently large number of German armed forces (Dirks, 2000). This uphill task can easily be compared with the uphill task that is currently faced by American forces in eliminating the threat of terrorism from the globe but the forces are fighting hard will energetic spirit to save their land, however, in the movie the mission of defeating enemy is hopeless right from the scratch.

From the start the French army is determined to enter the blood spattered war, however, the response from colonel Dax's seniors appears to be shocking and nasty as they instructed Dax to select three soldiers from his group to face trial on reasons of showing fear and weakness. These soldiers are being punished because of keeping themselves away from the instruction of General Broulard, and seniors through them aimed to teach other soldiers of the unit a lesson of the importance of discipline (Ebert, ...