During my high
school years I worked at what was, at the time, the nicest movie theatre in
Denver, The Century 21. In 1975 I remember a great deal of consternation among
the management when they found out we were getting the new Stanley Kubrick
movie. It ran over three hours plus a 15 minute intermission. We usually showed
movies four or five times a day, but Barry Lyndon would only
allow two showings a day. This made it a money loser for the theatre. In
addition, reviews were luke-warm and crowds were slim. We ushers had a lot of
time on our hands. When I wasn’t hitting on the popcorn girls, or sweeping the
lobby I spent hour upon hour staring at the screen absorbing what I now believe
is Kubrick’s greatest movie. I should mention that I consider Kubrick the
greatest modern director, and a man with very few peers in the history of
cinema. He approached his movies with such fearless individuality and ferocious
technique that only names like Hitchcock, Welles and Malick can be mentioned as
equals. Barry Lyndon is his ultimate expression of visual
storytelling. Never did Kubrick invest more care in the realization of his
theme. Even A Clockwork Orange feels restrained in its execution
compared to Barry Lyndon’s extraordinary success.
Based on a novel by Victorian
satirist William Makepeace Thackeray, Barry Lyndon tells
the story of Redmond Barry, a young Irish man of very modest background whose
stated goal of rising in society seems impossible for someone of such little
ambition and questionable moral fiber. However, young Redmond moves throughout
his early life with no direction, floating like a leaf on a stream in a society
filled with uncertainty, danger and opportunity. In the first two hours of the
film he experiences love, lust, betrayal, duels, highwaymen, The Seven Years' War, desertion, the lowest lows and, finally, a taste of the good life as he
becomes a gentleman gambler skirting the edges of European high society. It is
at the gambling table that he comes in contact with Lady Lyndon, a fabulously
wealthy woman who is fantastically beautiful and married to a miserable old
goat who is ready to die and pave the way for Redmond Barry to become Barry
Lyndon. The last third of the movie shows Barry’s rise and fall in English
society. His life becomes a cruel, inexorable march toward weakness, despair
and loss. Throughout, Barry’s own lack of morality is mirrored by the larger
society he inhabits. Everyone he encounters seems somewhat malevelont, and
events swirl in the maelstrom of history with little predictability or reward.
In this way, Kubrick brilliantly puts his finger on the modern condition. The
more refined the society, the thinner the veil between chaos and order.
Kubrick had complete, auteur-like control over the execution of this film,
investing literally years and millions of dollars in the lighting, lenses,
locations and music. The result is what has to be THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FILM EVER
MADE. Seriously, I just can’t think of another movie that is more visually
rewarding than Barry Lyndon. Each and every scene is a breathtaking
set-piece, more like an old-master painting than a movie. I found myself going
back to scenes to convince myself that it was a real scene, but there is no
trickery in this movie. When a scene is lit by candlelight, it is actually
filmed in candlelight. When the French and British armies approach each other,
firing and falling by the hundred, it is actually hordes of meticulously
dressed extras walking through a smoke-filled, dawn-lit battlefield. Every
detail is filled with the most extraordinary level of detailed directorial
obsession that it is truly possible to lose yourself in this film. It feels
like being in a time machine and walking around in the past. Kubrick used every
iota of technical and creative ability he had to bring this vision to life and
he succeeds beyond his wildest expectations. The casting is impeccable with
Ryan O’Neil showing why Farrah Fawcett chose him over every other man in the
world, and Marisa Berenson providing the most restrained portrayal of icy
beauty in the history of the movies. Every single second of Barry Lyndon
is impossibly gorgeous, rewarding your faith in the artistic vision of
director Stanley Kubrick and the art of film in general. It is long and slow
and lovely and ugly and hopeful and scary and memorable and over too fast…just
like life.
- Paul Epstein
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