SPOILERS BELOW.

The soldiers' pretty much inconsolable fear at knowing they'd be executed for their "cowardice" is very hard to watch. Not at all "macho" behavior, and therefore, they didn't die "macho" deaths. So I feel you on your post. Man, Kubrick is a once-every-hundred-years director if ever there was one.

Playing tonight on BBC 2 The ending is really a tearjerker if anybody claims that Kubrick is a cold, detached emotionless director you should let them watch this movie and even though the ending is bleak the scene with Christiane is not only highly emotional but also raises a glimmer of hope.

RIP Kirk Douglas (1916-2020), age 103.

Just watched this last night, like you, sat there in silence after the credits went dark. Then watched all the bonus interviews and watched the movie again with the commentary track.

A true masterpiece and definitely the hardest gut punch I’ve ever gotten from a war movie (a genre based on gut punches). I knew Kubrick’s films have a cynical slant but wow, this one out-cynics even Clockwork Orange. I think it’s because Clockwork—and a lot of bitter pill films of the cold war 60s-70s-80s—had a certain satirical sneer, a dark comedy twist that gives the audience an odd sense of comfort in absurdity; whereas Paths has no such cheekiness. The darkness is pure dark.

Wait, correction. It’s not pure dark. Even worse, there’s a pale, malformed glow of hope that proves to be utterly powerless against the machine of war & folly of man. In this case it’s the impotent old priest in the last act promising empty “thoughts and prayers” even as he literally leads them straight to the shooting post. And in one of the greatest shows of cinematic irony it’s the young German girl’s singing which brings the soldiers to tears in one last display of humanity before the film’s punchline: “Give the men a few minutes” (before sending them to their deaths).

One thing I was surprised to learn from the commentary was that Kubrick originally wanted to give the film a happy ending where the men are saved. Surely that’s what we were all hoping for (and I genuinely expected it), but he was talked out of it… possibly by Kirk Douglas himself. The result is bleak as hell but certainly fitting. No war movie can end happy.