Barry Lyndon

United States / United Kingdom, 1975
Directed by Stanley Kubrick

Barry Lyndon is seemingly Stanley Kubrick's most "normal" film. Based on an 1844 novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, it outlines the rise and fall of Redmond Barry, an 18th century Irishman and opportunistic social climber, who fights in the British and Prussian armies in the Seven Years' War (and deserts both), ascends to the highest levels of society through lies, luck and seduction, and ultimately loses it all. The broad strokes of Barry Lyndon are typical, it's a story we've all heard before. There is nothing here as obviously outrageous as many of Kubrick's other films - including, prior to Lyndon, a political satire ending in nuclear holocaust (Dr. Strangelove), a trippy science fiction epic (2001), and a bizarre shocker about crime and punishment in a dystopian London (A Clockwork Orange). Yet in its own way, Barry Lyndon is every bit as unusual and challenging as any of them, and just as clearly an uncompromised product of Kubrick's vision.

Barry Lyndon's opening sets the tone for the 3 hours to follow. The funereal notes of Handel's "Sarabande" blare on the soundtrack as the opening titles appear.

The first image shows, from a distance, two men about to engage in a duel.

We cannot see their faces, and their human drama - of life-or-death importance to them, obviously - is dwarfed by the landscape surrounding them. The scene almost looks more like landscape painting than photography. A narrator informs us, without an ounce of emotion in his voice: "Barry's father had been bred, like many other young sons of a genteel family, to the profession of the law. And there is no doubt he would have made an eminent figure in his profession -" BANG "- had he not been killed in a duel, which arose over the purchase of some horses." And we see Barry's father fall limp in the distance.

This opening tells us several things about Barry Lyndon. 1) This is a highly formalized film - from the overwhelming classical music, to the fussily decorous titles, to the painterly cinematography. 2) Largely due to 1), this is a distant, cold film. We are observers of these people and their tragedies, but Kubrick never invites us to feel sympathy for them. We are always kept at a distance. The dry narration often tells us what is about to happen before it actually does, flattening suspense or typical engagement with the story, and it even makes sardonic little jokes at the expense of the characters, which leads us to 3) this is all quite absurd. The duel may have been of the utmost importance to Barry's father, but to us it looks petty and foolish - a dumb quarrel erupting over an event as comparatively trivial as the purchase of horses. The grand aesthetics do not elevate the characters and their tragedies so much as parody them.

Barry Lyndon's attitude of bemused detachment is what makes it so unique. Our main character is never particularly likable, and star Ryan O'Neill intentionally plays Barry as a blank slate of a person. The film moves along at a steady pace - about the speed of a glacier, also an apt comparison for how warm and friendly it is. I've probably made it sound deeply unappealing: Barry Lyndon is beautiful but cold, and unconcerned with character development or traditionally engaging storytelling. Yet it is mesmerizing, and even surprisingly enjoyable. How so?

For starters, I'm not using the word "beautiful" lightly in this case. Barry Lyndon is one of the most gorgeous movies ever made. If every artform has at least a handful of indisputable genius artists, then Stanley Kubrick must be considered one of the true geniuses of the movies. From the cinematography to the music to the editing, Barry Lyndon is masterfully crafted. Every image is carefully composed and lighted - Barry Lyndon used natural lighting instead of set lights, which at the time required the development of a new type of camera lens (also used by NASA). The effect is magical, especially in the scenes lit only by candles. The images have a soft glow that, along with the film's slow, steady rhythm and beautiful music, has a hypnotizing power. Taken purely as abstract art, Barry Lyndon is remarkable.

But there's more to it than that. The images of Barry Lyndon are designed to look like paintings, not only for beauty's sake but to communicate the story's themes. Redmond Barry wants to attain a certain status within a society that prizes a rigidly aestheticized lifestyle. He lies, cheats, and transforms himself to achieve his goals, and as he does so, the images themselves become more formal and stylized. Through much of the first half, detailing Redmond's humble beginnings as an Irish lad and anonymous soldier, the imagery is painterly, but has an openness and freedom to it.

As the film continues and Redmond reaches the highest levels of his society, the photography becomes more static and controlled. In Barry Lyndon, the indoors, ritualistic life of the high class is portrayed like a luxurious prison. Characters are trapped in beautiful images resembling the tableaux of 18th century paintings. The Lyndon estate becomes as claustrophobic as the Overlook Hotel of Kubrick's next film, The Shining.

The highly controlled camerawork is violated during several violent moments of the story. Redmond starts a fistfight with another soldier during his time in the British army. Kubrick films the fight with a handheld camera, giving it an intimate, visceral quality shockingly different from the cool distance of most of Barry Lyndon. We hardly ever see Redmond happier than during this scene, where he is beating the hell out of another man.

Stanley Kubrick rarely had a kindly view of human nature, and his Barry Lyndon is a savage satire of the classism of 18th century society. As Kubrick views it, there is a brutal animal nature beneath the formality of high society. All the rituals and grandeur of their civilization are just fancy trappings on a "survival of the fittest" Darwinian struggle to be the biggest and the best, to crush any competitors. A perfect society for a sociopath like Redmond Barry to flourish in. Moments like the aforementioned fight scene are just the characters - and the film itself - dropping any pretense and revealing their true nature. Kubrick plays much of this for sardonic, bone-dry comedy, and it is surprisingly hilarious at times.

Yet, to the film's credit - and keeping it from becoming totally misanthropic - Redmond Barry is not entirely unsympathetic despite being a nasty cad. He is also tragically misguided, a young man in search of his place and in want of a father figure. We see him behave gently and honorably around only a few people - including a superior in the army who becomes a mentor, and Barry's young son who he loves dearly - and he loses all of them. For all its frigid cynicism, Barry Lyndon accumulates moments of tremendous power, particularly towards the end. Kubrick may be ruthless in his view of human folly but Barry Lyndon is not entirely heartless.