Year: 1975
Director: Stanley Kubrick
There are many films vying for the title of lost masterpiece. Barry Lyndon, if not that, is certainly the odd one out of the Kubrick oeuvre, passed even by Eyes Wide Shut until this year’s new print and re-release, which we were fortunate enough to see on a big cinema screen.
And if you can get to a screening you should. The description of the cinematography used most frequently is like a Constable painting come to life. And this is true, but one could also think of Joseph Wright of Derby and even Caravaggio in the candlelit interior scenes. Every shot is framed like a painting, and the exterior scenes achieve a naturalism I’ve seen in very few other historical dramas. It’s georgeous throughout, from the early scenes in rural Ireland to the stately home of Lyndon’s final rise (and fall). Kubrick brings the same extra-ordinary visual flair to the costume drama as he does to sci-fi – a clarity that makes one feel that one is watching a documentary even though the head is marvelling at the artifice.
The story is derived from an nineteenth-century novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon and as with Clockwork Orange we are guided through the story by a narrator. Here though our offstage voice is not that of the protagonist, but the Victorian author – by turns wondering, exasperated and sympathetic to Barry’s attempts to better himself. There are intertitles, an interval, and other devices that serve to heighten the episodic nature of the story: though deliberately paced the story is never boring as we follow Barry’s rise from callow youth to soldier to professional con-artist and finally landed gentry. In many reviews Ryan O’Neals passive acting style was criticised, but it seems that now – and I agree – that it shows perfectly how Barry has moments of decision – but having set things in motion is then as swept along by the consequences of his actions as his lovers and colleagues are. Time and time again Barry encounters people who thinks that there is something to gain by giving him a leg up. There’s a great supporting cast including Maria Berenson as his self-absorbed wife; Leonard Rossiter as an English military officer whose wooing of Barry’s childhood sweetheart starts the story off; and Patrick Magee as a chameleon spy-cum-diplomat-cum-conman under whose tutelage Barry moves into high society.
It goes without saying in a Kubrick film that there’s an exquisite classical soundtrack, and that the ending is ambiguous to say the least.
The film is book-ended by two stunning duel scenes – both unbearably tense. So there’s much to enjoy, and Barry Lyndon’s transition from runt of the litter to the front row of the Kubrick canon is pretty well complete.
If you can find a cinema showing it it’ll be well worth your while, otherwise let’s hope BFI release their new digital print on Blu-Ray in due course.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
Kubrick fans, Poldark fans, Reggie Perrin fans
Aye, fantastic film and a wonderful classical soundtrack…..
https://youtu.be/mpoNjrM5DlY
According to wikithingy, Shubert’s Piano Trio No. 2 has been used in a number of other films, including The Hunger, Crimson Tide, The Piano Teacher, L’Homme de sa vie, Land of the Blind, Dear White People, Recollections of the Yellow House, the HBO miniseries John Adams, The Mechanic, and as the opening piece for the ABC documentary The Killing Season.
My favourite version (played slower than usual and really well-suited to the on-screen visuals) was in The Hunger.
I recall that special lenses were made to allow the filming by candlelight.
The lenses were used by NASA for the Apollo missions. Kubrick wanted to use natural light as far as possible in his obsession for authenticity and it’s only now in the digital age we can appreciate it fully. The blu-ray is stunning, displaying the Gainsborough-like exteriors and the Hogarthian interiors as Kubrick would have wanted.
Saw it in the cinema nearly 30 years ago. Thought it was tedious with a terrible lead.
Have the Blu-ray, maybe time to give it another chance.
Brilliant review. I love it when people revisit ‘old’ films. Myself, I’ve been on a major ‘Heaven’s Gate’ tip lately. I’m telling anyone who will listen that it’s a lost masterpiece.
With Barry I think it’s charitable of you to call what O’Neal does a ‘passive acting style’. For me, it’s more of a ‘drags down every film he’s in’ acting style, and even though he can’t quite destroy ‘Barry Lyndon’ for all the reasons you mention, I do wonder how much better the film would have been without the charisma vacuum sucking hard at its centre.
On a related note, have you seen ‘Extremities’ starring Farrah Fawcett? That’s another ‘is she shit or is she is acting shit’ performance. Perhaps they exchanged ideas.
This one was cursed for me: the first showing at the local Picturehouse was cancelled after the projector broke halfway through the adverts, the second time they made it to the end but bolloxed the projection up so that the top and bottom of the frame were off the edge of the screen, ruining Kubrick’s carefully composed images. Terrific film, though.
Haven’t seen this at the cinema, but this re-release prompted me to dig out my DVD, and I enjoyed it more than either of my previous 2 viewings… without the burden of expectations, and now Ryan O’Neal is all-but-forgotten, therefore not bringing any “Love Story” baggage with him, it stands on its own as a classic period tale, genuinely amazing to look at (for once “every frame looks like a painting” isn’t an exaggeration), and paced to perfection (though I can see why many consider it overly slow and ponderous, as indeed I did first time around many years ago…) As always, makes you wonder just how incredible Kubrick’s Napoleon movie could have been…
PS Kubrick actually supplied notes for cinema projectionists on how best to show the film, including the music to play beforehand! http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Message-From-Stanley-Kubrick-Projectionists-Showing-His-Films-25500.html
There’s only a few short battle scenes in BL (he’s more a lover than a fighter), but they are brutal – does make you think about the Napoleon film.
Hope you watched it Afterword-style ie at double speed.
I am rather Kubrick-agnostic, but this lovely review has piqued my interest. Adding this movie to my wishlist.
I feel I maybe should give it a go.
I saw it first time around and was bored to tears.
I liked it when I saw it on DVD a few years ago.
But i absolutely loved it when I saw it on the big screen a few weeks ago.
Maybe I’ll need to give it a second chance. I love Kubrick but I found myself checking my watch more than a couple of times when this was on.
And for all the praise over the look of the film and the use of natural light… Hmmm. I thought it was a bit grainy, with a kind of grey cast over everything. That was on DVD, so maybe the Blu Ray is better?
I sometimes find Kubrick’s images a bit … I don’t know… Flat and colourless? I think A Clockwork Orange looks really cheap for example. He seemed to peak visually with 2001 – which has a fabulous rich colour palette (the black depths of space, the clinical white spaceships, the red room of HAL’s ‘brain’, and of course the psychedelic Stargate) – then his films just looked all grimy until Eyes Wide Shut, which looked luscious.