In the dark years to come, when the same vainglorious men who promised us a golden age of “connection” begin to demand our sons’ and daughters’ sacrifice - we’d do well to remember Kubrick and Douglas’s interrogation of war’s futility.
Paths of Glory is a visceral film, with intense battle set pieces and equally tense courtroom sequences.
110 years ago Western Civilization threw away a century of peace, cultural advancement, beauty and dynamism in an orgy of bloodlust and nationalistic stupidity. The destruction was so profound - the demonic forces it unleashed have yet to be fully reckoned with - despite Auschwitz and Hiroshima.
After 80 years of relative peace and bourgeois growth, the spectre of the trenches haunts us all.