Barry Lyndon
by Stanley Kubrick
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Hardy Kr?ger, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Ryan O'Neal, Steven BerkoffDirector: Stanley Kubrick
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); French (Original Language); German (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Original recording remastered, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 184 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-10-23
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Warner Home Video
Movie Reviews of Barry Lyndon
Movie Review: An empty vessel.
Summary: 3 Stars
By this point in time everyone knows that Stanley Kubrick spent the 1970s wanting to make an epic about Napoleon. It stands to reason, therefore, that Barry Lyndon was a warm-up to that project where he would work out his visual techniques and stately portrayal of European history. He said as much on numerous occassions, and never could give a good answer as to why this material appealed to him otherwise.
What Kubrick succeeded in doing was faithfully recreating the 18th Century and its environs in stunning detail, at times even repurposing the imagery of oil paintings into cinematography. It is a magnificent film in this respect; Barry Lyndon works on a "big idea" level exceptionally well, as an unrelentingly singular vision of creating the art film to end all art films.
Unfortunately, its greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. It would seem that many of the reviewers who disliked the film in the early 1970s were onto something when they criticized the overall flat tone of the exercise. Kubrick treats his main characters as little more than marionettes, and whenever he lets the audience in on an intimate, revelealing moments, it seems calculated for the grand dramatic sweep of the vision, and never lets the film get energized by its performances. The narration only reinforces the effect.
Some of this is the result of having such unremarkeable actors for the two main roles. While the British cast do excellent jobs in their relatively small parts, and Harvey Kruger lights up the film as a Prussian Officer, Ryan O'Neal and particularly Marisa Berenson are complete bores. O'Neal does have some charisma, but it is rather restrained and it is a stretch to see him as a schemeing Irishman, charming his way across the European continent. Marisa Berenson leaves almost nothing to say about her performance -- because there is little for her to do other than stare listlessly into the distance and look pretty. No matter how "stately" or ironic the film, it is not a good thing to have your main characters be wooden props. Lord Bullingdon comes across as the most dynamic of the Lyndons, but he is a rather unlikeable person and Leon Vitali was wise to choose a career behind the scenes after the completion of the shoot.
So it all seems a bit much when the ending title card appears with a heady Thackerian statement about indomitable role of fate in human life. As another Amazon reviewer pointed out (back in 2001!), this does not seem to square with Kubrick's decidedly different emphasis on people getting their "just desserts", but I suppose it could also be read as an ironic and bleak statement on the social mobility, or lack thereof, of the 18th Century. Still, the message is more than a bit muddled and only undermines the rather dull and uninspired denoument. It would seem that in fetishizing all things European, Kubrick has fallen prey to the cliches of the overeager enthusiast, crafting a gorgeous although imitative piece of Anglophilia that is ignorant of just what it's trying to say.
Summary of Barry Lyndon
Thackeray's tale of a roguishly charming 18th century Englishman, card shark and con-man whose good fortune and luck finally run out.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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