Barry Lyndon (1975) [Repost]

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Barry Lyndon (1975) [Repost]

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This often breathtaking exploration of the world of Thackeray’s titular eighteenth-century Irish adventurer is the nearest the great director ever came to realising his uppermost ambition, to film a life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Thus all the grand armies, dashing uniforms and suffusion of gunsmoke (here pertaining to the pre-Bonaparte Seven Years’ War). Another kind of smoke pervades the series of lowly Irish farmsteads, elegant brothels and imposing country houses through which the film’s antihero, Redmond Barry (played by then fashionable, fresh-faced hot property Ryan O’Neal), fights, duels, gambles and seduces his way to success and back again – that of a million candles, the natural source of illumination that Kubrick insisted on using, to the astonishment of cinematographer John Alcott, to render authentic interiors.

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Barry Lyndon (1975) [Repost]

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Despite that, much of the atmosphere, decor, mannerisms and performances are fake (not least the ridiculous turns by Murray Melvin, Leonard Rossiter and the insipid Marisa Berenson) – not that it matters much. It’s not only the beautifully intoned third-person narration (by Michael Horden), the consummate mise-en-scène and stunning photography but the iron-strong confidence of direction that help transform Thackeray’s lively picaresque tale into one of cinema’s most heartfelt and sustained (it runs over three hours), if cynical, visions of an individual’s powerlessness when confronted with the impersonal, mangling machinery of power and fate. What a magnificent, mesmeric slow dance it is, not merely of death but of an ambitious man’s inexorable decline.

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Barry Lyndon (1975) [Repost]

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A relative failure at the time (1975) – despite Ken Adam’s Oscar for design – it improves with each passing year, although it must take part of the blame for making the immortal strains of Handel’s Sarabande the evergreen Classic FM favourite it is.

Time Out

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Barry Lyndon (1975) [Repost]

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Grave, painterly, and bitterly satirical, BARRY LYNDON baffled viewers who expected picaresque breeziness along the lines of TOM JONES. Kubrick's translation of the Thackeray novel downplays its frivolity and foregrounds its acerbic social critique. With an actor only slightly more expressive than Ryan O'Neal in the lead, this sombre costume epic might have reached the level of tragedy; as it is, the film is langorous to a fault, but so visually delightful and keenly observed that its excesses demand forgiveness.

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Barry Lyndon (1975) [Repost]

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The title character (Ryan O'Neal) is a rustic Irish boy who falls in love with a local lass (Gay Hamilton). When he threatens to disrupt her financially desirable match with an English officer (Leonard Rossiter), her family tricks him into leaving town. Barry's subsequent adventures encompass triumph and disaster: among other things, he is impressed into (and deserts from) two warring armies, becomes assistant to an itinerant society card sharp, and woos a widowed aristocrat (Marisa Berenson). His decision to marry her–dictated solely by his desire to acquire social standing–is a tragic misstep; thenceforward, Barry's life describes an inexorable downward trajectory.

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Barry Lyndon (1975) [Repost]

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BARRY LYNDON received mixed notices, but even its detractors had to concede that it was one of the most visually beautiful movies ever shot: Kubrick lavished on his film a kind of attention to period detail that remained unmatched until the release of Scorsese's THE AGE OF INNOCENCE nearly 20 years later. In an effort to recreate the look of 18th-century canvasses, the director resolved to shoot the film wholly without artificial lighting; with cinematographer John Alcott, he pioneered the indoor use of ultra-high-speed color film–some scenes are lit only by candles! Music, as always with Kubrick, is integral to the project; Irish folk tunes by The Chieftains and Schubert's E-minor Trio (which has since become something of a movie cliche) are particularly well used.

TV Guide

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A huge joke — a three-hour-plus epic about an utterly useless man.

I certainly don’t mean that as a criticism; this is perhaps Stanley Kubrick’s most unexpectedly funny film. As Redmond Barry, who slimes his way up the social ladder to become Barry Lyndon, Ryan O’Neal may seem to be miscast, but I think that’s part of the joke, too. If you say O’Neal doesn’t have the chops to be the star of an epic — well, does Barry Lyndon really have the chops to be the hero of one?

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Barry Lyndon (1975) [Repost]

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The exquisite formality of the 18th-century costumes, decor, and dialogue (the movie contains perhaps the most polite armed robbery in film history) is refreshing and, at the same time, so belabored that one senses Kubrick’s tongue firmly in cheek. He was daring people to take it seriously; he was daring people not to take it seriously. The best way to approach it is as a formal satire whose very style — all those painterly landscapes, all those dozens of slow zooms backward — points up the message that all this opulence and attention to manners conceal a moral emptiness, a world where a compassionless jerk like Barry can rise and thrive. All this, plus scenes that made me laugh harder than anything in most comedies these days. Every shot in the movie is breathtaking, but the candlelit scenes are amazing.

A true neglected jewel in the Kubrick crown, and deserving of a fresh audience with its debut on remastered DVD.

eFilmCritic

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Barry Lyndon (1975) [Repost]

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Special Features:
- Theatrical trailer
- Awards list

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Barry Lyndon (1975) [Repost]

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