Paths of Glory (9/28)
by llentine ~ December 20th, 2010. Filed under: Uncategorized.I realize that the blog post I was supposed to write on this movie was saved as a draft and never published. Therefore, I am publishing it now.
The film “Paths of Glory” really shows the corruptness of military officials back in the older times of war. The plot of this film basically surrounds one person, General Mireau. Mireau wants Colonel Dax’s troops to try and take “The Ant Hill” which is across enemy lines, even though he knows that half of the men will probably lose their lives in the process. He is so caught up on attacking the enemy that he will do whatever he deems necessary to try and capture them, even if it means losing unnecessary life. When the men do go out on the battlefield, the whole atmosphere of war proves too much as most of the men do not even make it out of the trenches. The fire of arms was so much and the weather so clear so as not to give the men the advantage of a hidden attack, that taking “The Ant Hill” was not at all possible. When Mireau sees the men not making progress, he gets so antsy that he might not capture the enemy that he actually orders artillery to open fire on his own men, thinking that maybe this would give them a better surge of enemy to crawl on further. This whole scene goes back to Clausewitz’s idea that only unreasonable actions come from passionate feelings. Mireau was acting so unreasonable under the pressures of losing a battle.
Of course, from here Mireau took three soldiers whom he felt were guilty of cowardice in the face of the enemy, to a trial where they were unable to call witnesses and were sentenced to be shot for not having “courage.” This is an extreme abuse of authority that isn’t anything new to the military. In the history of the war, there is the idea decimation which is basically killing a form of military discipline where officers would end up killing 10 percent of their regiment for things such as being cowardly in war. Although this is a very extreme aspect of war that was used mostly in the Roman military service, one can see that Paths of Glory uses a subtler way of expressing this idea by having only 3 men die for their cowardice. By doing this, Paths of Glory asserts itself as a film based on the history of war; that history can in fact repeat itself and that authority figures can still in fact abuse their power, such as General Mireau did. It shows that abusing one’s power is no new concept and has been going on for a while, even if it is in slightly different versions. This of course suggests that this will continue to happen and that maybe it is in one’s nature to be corrupt in this manner, since it happened in the past and can happen again so easily.
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