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In Paths of Glory Stanley Kubrick constructs a visual condemnation of warfare. The most obvious device he uses is the brutality of the battle sequences, which realistically portray the physical horrors of war. However, the more powerful statement that Kubrick makes in the film is of the raw unfairness of the war to those actually fighting it. Throughout the film Kubrick juxtaposes or contrasts in different scenes the excess and inhumanity of the commanding officers with the deprivation and underlying humanity of the soldiers. He shows himself a student of montage principals for he creates meaning in the film by contrasting images, though he almost never simply puts them right next to one another. Because there is no way to directly go between the officers and soldiers Kubrick made the character of Colonel Dax important in the film as a way to connect the two sides of the issue. Throughout the film he moves between the two groups to bring light to the different criteria by which the viewer is to judge the commanders and the soldiers. Because of his function Dax is never really allowed to join either of the two sides and at the end of the film he is left disconnected, though Kubrick has made it clear through camera and plot-line whose side we should be on and whose side Dax is on.

The film begins in a grand chateau where General Mireau and General Broulard are discussing the possibility of an attack on the Ant Hill. The room is noticeably bright and the picture is almost overexposed with light pouring in from the windows. The room that they are in is wide open with much room for them to move around in, which is emphasized by Mireau's pacing around. The design of the room is the gilt and extravagant Baroque and even bordering on the over-the-top Rococo style reflecting the decadence of the officers themselves. A few scenes later we are shown the dugout of Colonel Dax, as General Mireau comes to tell him of the plan to take the Ant Hill. Dax's living quarters are dark and dirty. The ceilings feel like they are closing in on the characters and there seems to be almost no room for the Mireau and Dax to move in them. In this scene Dax is identified with his soldiers for his dugout is like that of his men (we are shown these later on in the film). His quarter's sparse setup is contrasted with the plush chateau. Though he is shown as being connected with his men here, he is not directly connected, which will be significant in the rest of the film. The camera remains focused on Dax as Mireau talks of the plans to take the Hill and it shows the pain that Dax feels as the General lists the high percentage of men that will be killed. Dax at first struggles to defend his men against making the attack, but then the General brings up Patriotism, an abstract motivation made by those who are not actually fighting which Dax calls "The last refuge of a scoundrel," as cause enough for the attack. In the end Dax must submit to Mireau because, just as his men, he is powerless and when the General threatens to give his command to someone else he realizes that he will do his men no good if he is not commanding them in the attack.

A second opposition that Kubrick sets up is between the perception of the soldiers and the Generals of the Ant Hill objective. At the beginning of the film, we see the perspective of a soldier as he looks out of the trenches toward the unknown future objective of the Ant Hill. It looks very far away at this time, a small point at the end of the horizon. The distance of the Ant Hill from the soldiers perspective is again shown by the night patrol that moves through several fades, each implying a passage of time, but seems to be no closer to the Hill even when it reaches its furthest point. This is contrasted with the point of view of the general who is always looking at the Ant Hill through binoculars. To him the objective always seems unrealistically close and he has no comprehension of just how far it is, mirroring his lack of understanding of his soldiers in general, or how impossible this target is to attain.

Another contrast in the film is between the tracking shots of General Mireau and Colonel Dax. Mireau goes on one of his "moral boosting" tours of the troops and he never seems to make a connection with the soldiers. The camera is always in front of him, stopping whenever he stops to repeat his mechanical "talk" with the soldiers: "ready to kill more Germans?" In this tour he meets all meets with two of the three people that will be executed in the film (Ferol and Arnaud) He always reacts more than the rest of the soldiers to the shells that land around them. He shows how out-of-touch and uncompassionate he is when he overreacts to the shell-shocked soldier. This sequence is contrasted to Dax's tour of the men right before the battle is commences. It is also a tracking shot, but there is one major difference. Cut into the shots of him walking through the trench are point of view shots of him observing the troops as they wait for the offensive. Even though Dax never speaks to any of these soldiers this shot shows that he is silently more connected to these soldiers than General Mireau will ever be even with all of his bravado. As the battle commences we see Dax with the men charging toward the hill with extremely loud shells and machine gun fire landing everywhere juxtaposed with the general separated in his bunker, the shells a far off quiet storm that do not effect him. Again, Mireau has no comprehension of the difficulty of the task that his men are undertaking and Dax is right in the thick of it though the camera separates him by always keeping him the center of the movement with soldiers dying all around him.

The courtroom scene is the only one in which the three elements, officers; soldiers; and Dax, interact. The accused soldiers stand no chance and they are completely removed from their element. At nearly every moment the officers, including Dax, are in charge of the camera movement. It follows them as they move around the room and the soldiers are left swimming in the space of the room that they so clearly do not belong in. When the camera does close-up on one of the accused, it is off centered with much negative space around his head. The prosecutor's final remarks are shown from the perspective of the judges while Dax's final remarks to the court are shown from the side of the soldiers. This shot once again shows how Dax is connected to the soldiers, but he is not as fully attached as he would have been if he were shown to the viewer from the point of view of one of the soldiers and again the shot choice shows that he is not quite a soldier.

The final two sequences of the film represent Dax's final step away in horror from the officers and his step closer mentally toward the soldiers, but his still constant physical separation from his men. First, Dax confronts the two generals in the chateau. At the beginning of the sequence, he is isolated in a shot with General Broulard as the general condemns Mireau for firing on French soldiers. After Mireau leaves Broulard makes it apparent that the reason he did this had nothing to do with the men and everything to do with public opinion. Dax moves away from the general in disgust, showing that he no longer has any connection to the officers. The final sequence of the movie has the men in a bar, bawdily yelling at a German singing girl. Dax is at first horrified because he thinks those who he has been fighting for are showing themselves just as inhumane as the officers are. The men then change and start humming along with the German girl and in doing so make their own bond with the "enemy." In this scene Dax is again shown the basic good of humanity and his faith in his men is once again restored. For a final time this connection(movie) is only a mental one for Dax is again physically separated by the camera. He remains outside of the cantina as the men sing and the two sides are never shown in the same shot.

In the final sequences of Paths of Glory, Kubrick uses Dax to restore our faith in humanity. As in any successful tragedy this film leaves us with a sense that although terrible things have occurred we are left with some satisfaction with the ending. Throughout the film the commanding officers act like complete animals and in the end the common soldier is shown to be the most humane. The problem that this movie does leave unresolved is although this is a horrible event there is nothing in the film that says it will not happen again. Kubrick leaves the film this way intentionally to finish off his anti-war message. He wants the viewer to be appalled by this and act to prevent war from occurring in the future. In doing this Kubrick has made a movie that truly shows the physical and mental brutality of war.