Amazingly Beautiful

Rating: 9/10 (13 July 2014)

Barry Lyndon is quite the film. I had heard this was Kubricks most slow film, and while it did feel slow in certain areas, most of the time it had me enthralled. It's a beautiful and epic film, and because of it's length (3 hours and 5 minutes), you really get the feeling you have seen this mans life.
I think I will start off with just the visuals of this movie. Wow. The costume and set design in this are absolutely incredible. It's also shot incredibly well. It's no surprise why it won Oscars in those categories. The whole time I watched it, I kept thinking that it didn't feel like a movie. I never imagined the cameras and crew standing there. It felt like I was witnessing people in this time period. Like I was actually there. That's the highest compliment you can give a period piece film. Every shot is beautifully framed and looks like a painting, which was actually what they aimed to do. Visually, it will just blow you away.
The story is pretty great to. It spans over a large amount of time, and lots of different things happen. There are little sections where it felt like, to me, that nothing new was happening and that made the film drag a bit, but those sections were fairly short lived. The performances overall are pretty great. Ryan O'Neal sometimes left me a little underwhelmed, but he had his moments, and I thought that he did a good job when he really needed to perform. All the other side characters are great too. Everyone just seems to fit their roles.
Barry Lyndon is a film that needs to be seen if you are a fan of films. It's absolutely beautiful and is quite the experience over all. Check it out.