Masters of War: Kubrick's Spare, Trench-Eye View of Combat
Courting death: Carey and Anderson photo: Photofest  Whatever
its flaws, Jarhead has raised a perennial question—is there any
such thing as an anti-war war movie?—and what's more, proposed
an answer: If it's screenable for our boys, it ain't anti-war.
Sam Fuller, whose point that combat cannot be represented but
only lived is often cited in critiques of the genre, also made
the useful distinction between those movies that smacked of
"recruitment flavor" and those that didn't. And when it comes to
recruitment flavor, Stanley Kubrick's 1957 Paths of Glory has a
definite deficiency.  Kubrick's pitiless evocation of World War
I's Western Front (based on Humphrey Cobb's 1935 novel, itself
inspired by actual events footnoted in the book) demonstrates
that the primary victim is the enlisted man. With its modernist
score, economical characterizations, and repeated dollies
through the trenches, Paths of Glory looks forward to later
Kubrick. There's a near mat