I am a big Stanley Kubrick fan. Well, of his work if not the man. But somehow, I had not gotten around to Barry Lyndon. OK, most people don’t get around to Barry Lyndon. The Simpsons did a Halloween episode segment when one was just a bunch of Kubrick references, and the Barry Lyndon reference was even joked about as one even many Kubrick fans have never seen or heard of. I’ve seen it referenced many times on online lists of great movies, but I can’t say I know anyone who has actually seen it. And it’s leaving HBO Max at the end of the month.
Also, I have an HD set now, and given Kubrick’s skill at shot composition, that alone will make the three hours I need to see it worth it all.
Divided into two sections that might as well be the rise and then subsequent fall of a young 18th century Irishman, this is the story of one Redmond Barry (later Barry Lyndon). Barry’s father died in a duel, and Barry’s own life goes the way it does after he gets involved in a duel of his own, one that he doesn’t know until much later was rigged to make him go away so the other man could marry Barry’s cousin Nora, AKA Barry’s first love. From there, Barry is robbed by a famous highwayman, joins the army, deserts the army, gets pulled into a different nation’s army, finds a patron, loses a patron, and eventually meets the beautiful Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson). Sure, she’s married, but her older husband has a bad heart, so it isn’t long before she and Barry can marry (he takes her name). But there’s a problem there: his stepson, Lord Bullingdon (Dominic Savage as a kid, Leon Vitali as an adult) hates Barry, possibly with good reason.
That “possibly” is something of a key in this movie. What kind of man is Barry? He has his faults, many of them, but is he some sort of grasping scoundrel who just wants to climb the social ladder? If he is, he’s not very good at it. Many of his attempts to take a step forward are undermined if not by his own actions than by someone else’s. He is at times more inept for his efforts. He isn’t a good liar, at least at first, and he tends to get caught, But at the same time, it isn’t completely out of the realm of possibility that he is less disreputable as it is people he associates with just look down on him due to his nationality or class, or even that pretty much everyone in this movie is downright awful. Yes, Barry does a lot of sleazy things, but Bullingdon’s distaste for Barry begins before he even has a reason to do so. Likewise, Barry’s life is often outright tragic. The fate of his own son was something even the narrator concedes is something that hits Barry hard because he, at the very least, loved his son.
That ambiguity actually would come from a director like Kubrick. He often wasn’t one to spell things out for his audiences, and he doesn’t even try to here depending on whether or not the movie’s narrator can be trusted. The various characters in Barry Lyndon don’t really reveal their emotions or their reasons for doing things much to each other. Bullingdon may be something of an exception, but does Barry, for example, ever love his wife? Probably not, but he does show her kindness from time to time even as he just as frequently shows her casual cruelty. Why does he let his mother try to take over his wife’s manor house? Why does she do many of the things she does? Is it because of her own financial insecurity? How much of what follows comes about because of the death of Barry’s father in the movie’s opening minutes? Was everything that happened to Barry inevitable? Barry rarely makes decisions for himself, and seems to mostly embody the concept of “failing upward” until societal gravity finally asserts itself. The film’s a mystery in many ways, open to interpretation, and that fits Kubrick’s MO, where his characters are generally emotionally distant even in the best of times.
That may be emphasized a bit by the look of the film. Kubrick did what he could to at least simulate natural light in the 18th century if not outright find ways to actually just use natural light, including candles for nighttime scenes. But more interesting was how many scenes were set up to look like artwork from that era. Kurbick always has a distinctive style of shot composition, a way to draw the viewer’s eye to what he wants to see more than anything else. The end result is a film that looks like something unlike most period pieces, one that looks more realistic than most. As the closing narration tells us, whether what happened to Barry Lyndon was right or not, it doesn’t matter because everyone involved is long dead. So, having a lot of uncertainty over what the characters thought and felt is appropriate because we really only have our eyes and what we see making a guess is all we can do…just like with an old painting. Basically, this is a Stanley Kubrick movie, one that may not get as much attention as his better known work, but worthy of being included on any list of his best work. That said, this one is obviously not for the casual viewer. So, while I loved it, I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone other than the aspiring film buff with a lot of experience with Kubrick’s work already under their belt.
Grade: A
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