Barry Lyndon
by Stanley Kubrick
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Actor: Hardy Krüger, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Ryan O'Neal, Steven BerkoffDirector: Stanley Kubrick
Cinematographer: John Alcott
Producer: Stanley Kubrick
Writer: Stanley Kubrick
Editor: Tony Lawson
Producer: Bernard Williams
Producer: Jan Harlan
Writer: William Makepeace Thackeray
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, Letterboxed, NTSC, Original recording remastered, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 184 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-06-12
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of Barry Lyndon
DVD Review: Like a dream, like a painting brought to wonderful life
Summary: 5 Stars
"Barry was one of those born clever enough in gaining a fortune, but incapable of keeping one, for the qualities and energies which lead a man to achieve the first are often the very cause of his ruin in the latter case."
This is the theme, spoken by an unseen narrator, which runs through at the very center of Stanley Kubrick's majestic historical epic "Barry Lyndon." Following a string of three masterworks, which, conventional wisdom has dictated, represent the creative peak of Kubrick's legendary career as a filmmaker, it was Thackeray's novel about the rise and fall of a young Irish scoundrel who rises the ranks of 18th century English nobility that the enigmatic artist chose to set his sights. Conventional wisdom also tells us that, beginning with "Barry Lyndon" in 1975 and as further pronounced in 1980 with the release of his horror opus "The Shining," Kubrick's work began to display a diminished artistic resonance. These films, the feeling goes, lacked the visionary, complex implications of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and the insightful social commentary of "A Clockwork Orange." Kubrick must simply be losing his touch, right? Well, not really. Although it may apply to "The Shining" and Kubrick's subsequent works, the conventional wisdom, as applied to "Barry Lyndon," is wrong. Or, should I say, it WAS wrong. That is, until time alone was able to be the final judge of the film's legacy. Fortunately, subsequent critical revisiting of the film led many to finally come around to appreciate "Barry Lyndon" and regard it as the rich and giant masterpiece that it is.
Kubrick himself was perhaps such a divisive and misunderstood artist due to his desire to tell stories against the grain of the usual approach. Unlike traditional film narratives, which most often focus on human relationships and manipulate our emotions through drama and conflict, Kubrick concerned himself on much larger themes. He was most often interested in man's relationship to his society, and explored themes of broader conflict. His dramas were not sentimentalized and narrowed by character conflicts alone, but always examined the implications of these characters and conflicts to the shaping of the course of society and humanity.
FILM ANALYSIS:
If for nothing else, Kubrick's film cannot be denied as a stunning example of visual achievement. Quite simply, it is one of the most sumptuous, haunting, majestic, and gorgeous cinematic experiences ever realized. Richard Schickel, the highly distinguished TIME magazine film critic, who did a cover story of the film prior to its general release, praised it as "perhaps the most ravishing set of images ever printed on a single strip of celluloid." The landscapes are epic and breathtaking, the interiors rich and elegant, and each shot composed with a painter's eye for design and detail. It is no surprise that Kubrick found his visual inspiration in 18th century paintings and even went so far as to pose his actors just as subjects in certain paintings were positioned. Additionally, the costume and sets are impeccably designed (so much so that they garnered Oscar wins, as did the photography and the music), and Kubrick's use of classical music further heightens the sense of high art and elegance. All of these production elements, coupled with a cast of actors who are in tune with the material and who embody the director's keen sense of genuine human qualities, bring to screen life an era in history with an authenticity that is often attempted but rarely ever accomplished so vividly. It is not a dull and ancient past, but a living, breathing present that we are immersed in.
As with most of Kubrick's work, after going through this journey, it is not the triumph of speech or spirit that remains with us, not the wit and wisdom of dialogue nor the emotional connection between people. It is purely the magical, visceral impact of the visuals that remains in our mind, and Kubrick puts great care into making everything count. It is the slow zooms that reveal the larger context, the landscapes, sometimes liberating, often just as oppressive. It is the nuance of a facial expression, the gleem in the eye, the empty gaze, the way that light plays off people and objects. It is the quite moments that reveal so much more than any words could ever justify. It is the music that brings mood and texture to the many varying states of emotion.
Kubrick, as well, is not up to his usual bag of tricks here. In his previous film, "A Clockwork Orange," he utilized a great many devices (i.e. slow motion, fast motion, fantasy, expressionistic acting, outerwordly sound effects) to create a bizzare and nightmarish sense of reality. In this film, however, the cinematic trickery is downplayed, as is necassary for the more elegant feel of the material, and the ever confident master artist takes great care in the more "pure" and classical elements of film storytelling that take root in the silent era. Each scene, each shot even, is deliberately executed with precise and flawless use of composition, lighting, sound, editing, and staging. Notice, for example, how the tension of the final climactic duel is so carefully escalated by the use of sound (pigeons in the rafters), music (a subtle underscore), and editing (the careful cuts back and forth between two faces), or how various pieces of music pronounce the transitions in Barry's life throughout the film.
CHARACTER ANALYSIS:
Through the journey of Redmond Barry (played with brilliant subtlety and understated turmoil by Ryan O' Neal), Kubrick is able to communicate themes of moral decay, decadence, and duplicity that exist in the attainment of power and social privilege. As we follow Barry's life, from a naďve and idealistic young Irishman, with little money and no prospects, to his rise as the cruel and treacherous Lord of the Lyndon manor, and finally to a beaten and broken man, crushed under the weight of his own inadequacies, we come to understand the dimensions of a man who has the skill and ruthless ambition necessary to use circumstances to his advantage. Ultimately, however, Barry's rise to power and fortune place him in a world this beyond his means, by which his incompetence is displayed in his squandering of the Lyndon fortune and the destruction of his own reputation. In a single moment of explosive rage between stepfather and stepson, a family quarrel that plays itself out in front of horrified spectators of London's high society, Barry begins to feel that weight bear down on him. Kubrick communicates this with a zoom out as Barry stands alone on the grand balcony, a distant figure, weak and vulnerable, overwhelmed by his great castle and by great responsibilities.
It is interesting, though, that Kubrick places judgment not only on Barry, who is admittedly a dishonest rascal, but also upon the society in which his characters exist. "Gentlemen may talk of the age of chivalry," says our omniscient narrator, speaking in a jovial British manner that only faintly masks the sarcastic brand of cynicism hiding just below the surface. Instantly, his point is clear to us. Humanity can be a cruel beast, in any age and under any circumstance, even a chivalrous one. What's more, Barry is a mere product of his age of "chivalry" and is not the only scoundrel who is able to cheat his way to the top of the social food chain. The classical scoring also adds an ironic contrast and counterpoint between the façade of nobility and the debauchery that many characters play a role in. Working with this theme, Kubrick, with a distinctive sense of characterization and human behavior, allows us to understand what makes a man (and perhaps mankind itself) proficient enough to acquire power, privilege, and political clout, often through immoral conduct, and how he comes to destroy these institutions and himself.
There is also the question of Barry's underlying motives. What is really behind this obsessive need to become a proper "gentleman," a title which takes on an ambiguous context as we discover certain facts about the inner-workings of the nobility. One gets a sense that there exists a deep rooted inferiority complex with Barry's character. Perhaps due to his underprivileged upbringing, or even due to the envy of not having the distinction of British pedigree (suggested in his joining the British army), Barry seems driven by resentment, self-loathing, and the need for acceptance. There is not one clear conviction that defines his quest, only a need to be perceived as something that he is not: a proper gentleman and dignified member of the privileged class. Our narrator questions the role of fate in Barry's rise to such fortune, but Kubrick ultimately seems to leave doubt to the credence of such ideas. Ultimately, it seems that, even when luck is on our side, when the grand gamble goes our way as it were, and we find ourselves in the favor of fate, there is no guarantee that the natural drives of humanity (in Barry's case, a self-destructive ambition for wealth and status) will favor our ability to maintain our good fortune. Man, after all, by the very flaw of his character, has the ability to be the ruin of his own way of life. Perhaps it can be seen as a warning to the rise to power of those who are incapable of acting with morality and prudence. Perhaps not. As with all of Kubrick's work, it does not lend itself to easy answers, only to immensely rewarding viewing, reviewing, and discussing...
Description of Barry Lyndon
In 1975 the world was at Stanley Kubrick's feet. His films Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange, released in the previous dozen years, had provoked rapture and consternation--not merely in the film community, but in the culture at large. On the basis of that smashing hat trick, Kubrick was almost certainly the most famous film director of his generation, and absolutely the one most likely to rewire the collective mind of the movie audience. And what did this radical, at-least-20-years-ahead-of-his-time filmmaker give the world in 1975? A stately, three-hour costume drama based on an obscure Thackeray novel from 1844. A picaresque story about an Irish lad (Ryan O'Neal, then a major star) who climbs his way into high society, Barry Lyndon bewildered some critics (Pauline Kael called it "an ice-pack of a movie") and did only middling business with patient audiences. The film was clearly a technical advance, with its unique camerawork (incorporating the use of prototype Zeiss lenses capable of filming by actual candlelight) and sumptuous production design. But its hero is a distinctly underwhelming, even unsympathetic fellow, and Kubrick does not try to engage the audience's emotions in anything like the usual way.Why, then, is Barry Lyndon a masterpiece? Because it uncannily captures the shape and rhythm of a human life in a way few other films have; because Kubrick's command of design and landscape is never decorative but always apiece with his hero's journey; and because every last detail counts. Even the film's chilly style is thawed by the warm narration of the great English actor Michael Hordern and the Irish songs of the Chieftains. Poor Barry's life doesn't matter much in the end, yet the care Kubrick brings to the telling of it is perhaps the director's most compassionate gesture toward that most peculiar species of animal called man. And the final, wry title card provides the perfect Kubrickian sendoff--a sentiment that is even more poignant since Kubrick's premature death. --Robert Horton
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