Warning: SPOILERS
This will be an analysis of power dynamics in the film "Paths of Glory", directed by Stanley Kubrick in 1957; starring Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, Adolphe Menjou and George MacCready. There will obviously be SPOILERS but going further I advise against reading this diary before you have seen the film, because although it is my personal favorite film, I can say without bias that it is one of the best war films of all time and one of Stanley Kubrick's best films. Instead, rent the film from Netflix.
From teach with movies:
Paths of Glory is a fictional work that describes an assault by French troops during WW I on an impregnable position called "The Ant Hill." The assault was a failure and many men died for nothing. To deflect blame from the general who ordered the assault, several soldiers were picked at random, blamed for the failure, branded cowards, and court martialed.
A recurrent theme in Paths of Glory is relations between the powerful and the powerless.
Lieutenant Roget commands a scouting expedition with Corporal Paris and a third man into no-man's land between the trenches. When they hear gunshots in the distance, Roget orders the third man to go forward and investigate. But when more shots are heard later, Roget, panicking throws a grenade in the direction of the sound and flees. Corporal Paris advances to investigate, only to discover that Roget's grenade has killed the scout, who was returning.
A Scouting Mission
Corporal Paris is furious, and confronts Lieutenant Roget privately when he returns to camp, where Roget is writing a report stating that both Corporal Paris and the scout have died. Lieutenant Roget, surprised to see Corporal Paris, at first tries to intimidate him, threatening to charge him with insubordination if he reports his cowardice. Then he threatens to deny Corporal Paris's version of the story, saying, "It's my word against yours. Whose word do you think they'll believe? Or let me put it another way... whose word you think they'll accept?" Then tries to appeal to Corporal Paris's sympathy: "Look, I'm not a bad guy. I feel terrible about what I did. I'll just revise this report to say that the scout was killed, and you and I made it back in once piece, and that will be the end of it. I'd give anything if it hadn't happened. That's the truth."
Corporal Paris confronts Lieutenant Roget
At this point, their commanding officer, Colonel Dax walks into the room. This is Corporal Paris's chance: Lieutenant Roget hasn't had time to revise the report he's written saying that both the scout and Corporal Paris were killed, which is obviously false. If Corporal Paris spoke out in the presence of Colonel Dax, Lieutenant Roget would have to show the false report he had already written.
But Corporal Paris has been moved by Lieutenant Roget's plea for mercy and goes along with Lieutenant Roget's story. Colonel Dax asks Lieutenant Roget to finish writing his report and have it on his desk later, then leaves.
Colonel Dax
Days later, all three Lieutenants in the Regiment are ordered to select one man from their respective companies to be executed by firing squad to set an example for the general "cowardice" of the regiment to complete a suicidal attack. Who does Lieutenant Roget select? Corporal Paris!
Of course, Corporal Paris tries to come out with his story now, but it's too late. His selection for execution has destroyed the credibility of his word, especially against Lieutenant Roget. And he no longer has any evidence.
The ultimate price.
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The incident, a subplot of Paths of Glory, is ripe with insights about power relations.
First, power means privilege, even if the powerful one does something wrong, he or she will always have leverage over the subordinate: "It's my word against yours. Whose word do you think they'll believe? Or let me put it another way... whose word you think they'll accept?" This open bias towards the powerful cows the weak from seeking justice against, or even protection from, the strong.
Second, the world of power relations has completely different rules than the world of human relations between equals. The average enlisted man (Corporal Paris) only understands the latter. To him, if you treat someone else fairly, you will be treated fairly yourself. Lieutenant Roget thinks in terms of power relations: it is all about whether you help me or are a threat to me. As long as Corporal Paris was just another faceless grunt in Lieutenant Roget's force, he was a slight net benefit to Lieutenant Roget. But now that he possesses this knowledge about Lieutenant Roget, he comes a net threat. It does not matter that he agreed to drop the matter. It does not matter that he does not deserve to die.
What Kubrick is saying, is that power comes at a price. When you gain real power, you exit the world of naive human relations where respect, fairness, and equality provide a guise of stability and civility as well as good feelings. In the world of power, every power threatens every other power and behaves accordingly. So it is an un-affordable luxury to possess power without exercising power.
The reason why the masses inhabit a world of goodness is their poverty: since they lack power, they have nothing much to fight over. Therefore, they are all polite, fair, and compassionate to one another; for they have not much to take from each other. The powerful one gets, the higher up in the rung of power one looks, the more this breaks down and the more sophisticated, the more calculating and cunning, the more merciless, human relations become. This is because the stakes are progressively raised. But the masses don't understand this because this world is alien to them. They, like Corporal Paris, assume that everyone operates by the same rules of guilelessness that they do. Hence, they easily believe the word of politicians, etc.
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The humanistic world the masses live in is a special case: the Darwinian world the elites live in is the general theory. Anything else is just apologia for power. As we see later in Paths of Glory, the subplot with Lieutenant Roget, Corporal Paris and Colonel Dax is played out later again on a grander stage, this time with Colonel Dax playing the role of Corporal Paris and General Brouland playing the role of Lieutenant Roget. We see Colonel Dax make the same mistake with General Broulard as Corporal Paris made with Lieutenant Roget. But this is the subject of a future diary.
No more Progressive message with such a broadly profound point, on a topic of such basic importance to politics (which is the study and practice of power) and so eloquently stated, has ever been put to film. And this is just a subplot! I will look at other aspects of this movie, including antiwar, secular, revolutionary and humanist themes, in later diaries.