Movie Review: Barry Lyndon (1975)

Stanley Kubrick was a master filmmaker. I don't believe there are many who would disagree with me. In his career which spanned from around 1949 to 1999, he made sixteen films, of which eleven were incredibly successful and critically acclaimed. Of his movies, I have only watched five: The Killing (1956), Paths of Glory (1958), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1972) and, most recently, Barry Lyndon (1975). One of the things that it is ultimately fascinating about Kubrick is that not one film is the same and he tackled a variety of genres, from Science Fiction to Period Drama. His trademark cinematographic style remains constant and many of his themes recur in his films but each movie is something different. And in Barry Lyndon couldn't be more different from the rest of his films.

Barry Lyndon is a period drama set in the late 1700s in Europe based off of the novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844) by William Makepeace Thackeray. Of all the films Kubrick has done, this is the movie that stands out the most in terms of being different from his other work. Kubrick, before this, had directed mostly risque films. But Barry Lyndon feels more like Kubrick was trying to take a break from his usual. Barry Lyndon is, in every essence of the meaning, a Period Drama. It's setting and story are kin to a novel like Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, in that the action all takes place in the 18th Century and thematically it is about a young person rising through the social hierarchy. But it is subverted in that way Kubrick always manages to do, which is to make it a bit grittier and not have a happy ending.

Redmond Barry (Ryan O'Neal) is a man from a humble family that doesn't have much land or wealth. His father is killed at the very beginning of the film before his birth in a duel. His mother takes no other suitors and raises the child by herself. From there, the viewer gets a story dedicated to a large part of his life, showing how he slowly becomes rich and powerful, only for it all to crumble in the second half of the movie. Just to clarify, this is not a spoiler, because the narrator tells us a lot of events that are going to happen right at the beginning of the film. However, the 'how' is what really drives the film, in that we don't know just how a man of Barry's stature came to possess such wealth and then lose it. This intrigues the audience to keep watching. Throughout his life, we see Barry transform from a green boy, to a soldier, to a spy and finally into an extremely wealthy man. The whole plot of the film is like a looking glass into the life of a man who seemingly has unpredictable things happen to him and we, the audience, are the ones lucky enough to see it.

Ryan O'Neal as Redmond Barry holds a blank, expressionless
face like this throughout the majority of the film, possibly
signifying his lack of emotion for anyone but himself.

Barry himself is an interesting character because, essentially, there is not really anything that is remotely special about him. We know he's an opportunist and a good fighter but there is nothing about him that screams that he's intelligent or has the brains to come into such wealth. He is, in fact, quite average. But the opportunist part is the most important because consistently Barry sees opportunities to exploit people or situations into his favor. You could say he pretty much has the best luck in the world when it comes to meeting powerful people. O'Neal plays his character well and doesn't really show that Barry has any emotions at all. The only time we get the feeling that he cares is when he is with his son Brian, whom he loves unconditionally, but he seems to bear none for anyone else, including his wife, step-son and mother. It is almost as if his sheer luck and opportunistic nature have blinded him to things that those characters consider very important: love and family. This backlashes against him later when all those who hated him come to strip him of all wealth and titles, leaving him to die a broke and broken man. Redmond Barry's character is a warning in itself against the dangers of low emotional intelligence and greed. But, at the same time, we feel peculiarly sorry for him by the end because we have seen his hardships and his rise and fall. This could also be reflected in the final scene of the film, where the Countess of Lyndon (Marisa Berenson) is with her son, Lord Bullingdon (Leon Vitali) and the Reverend Samuel Runt (Murray Melvin), going through all the debts to pay and stops when she comes across Barry's annuity check, which was agreed between him and Bullingdon. We see that she is hesitant to sign the check to the man who singlehandedly destroyed her family's wealth, before she signs it anyway. The question is, why did she sign it anyway? Was it to honor her son's agreement? Or was it out of a curious sense of pity for the man she was once married to?

This moody still from early in the film captures the type of
cinematography Kubrick wished to convey, as young Barry
flees from his home after killing an officer of the British army.

Technically, this film is fantastic. No wonder three of the four Oscars it won at the 1975 Academy Awards were for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography and Best Costumes and Make-Up. Kubrick carefully crafts his film into making each frame look like a Gainsborough or Hogarth painting. He even used ultra-fast lenses to capture natural lighting in the rooms used. He pays close attention to all the details of Georgian dress and used several locations around Europe to shoot scenes in the large manor houses. I think Kubrick found a freedom in film-making in Europe that he could never have found in Hollywood (at least, not at the time). Kubrick uses all these to his advantage to create a wonderfully detailed and fairytale-esque world that enraptures the viewer in splendour. The fourth Oscar the film won was for Best Original Score and it is fantastic. The way that Kubrick uses the music in this film is to say things with it that characters on screen cannot say; in other words, the music reflects the emotions of the characters, much like how Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982) tells its story through music and imagery.

Barry Lyndon is a brilliant film. It is funny to think that, at the time of its release, it did not do very well at the box office and received mixed reviews but now it is considered by many to be one of Stanley Kubrick's finest films. In many magazines, such as Sight and Sound, it was also named one of the greatest films ever made. Whilst I do believe that his masterpiece is 2001: A Space Odyssey and my favourite is A Clockwork Orange, I wouldn't be far behind that notion. Barry Lyndon is masterfully executed and fascinating to watch. It's story is intriguing, its characters sympathetic and its cinematography and soundtrack beautiful. Coming from a man who doesn't usually like period dramas, it is also an achievement by Kubrick to not only make me like it but also love it and I was very lucky to get it in my Christmas stocking this year. In every sense of the word, a gem.

FINAL VERDICT: 5/5