I'm sure it's a great novelle...

Rating: 6/10 (10 March 2004)

... but as a film, 'Barry Lyndon' doesn't quite work. We follow the life of country boy Redmond Barry and his rise and fall in British aristocracy. This is done in such a fragmentaric way it's hard to name it one movie. At one part, Lyndon is a spy for the Prussian Minister of Police, but only for the mere reason to make him meet the Chevalier, and the movie has loads of such bits and parts which are small movies at itself, and hardly interesting or important enough to be concluded in the whole. Another thing I found irritating is the over-use of the voice-over. He just tells way too much. Now, 'film-technical' there's nothing wrong with Barry Lyndon, it's even a masterpiece in some ways (hence the 4 oscars, and the endless and deserved praise it gets for the fantastic usage of lenses to get that candlelight feeling on the big screen), but in the end the story is not interesting enough to catch your interest, at least not for 3 whole hours. My grade: 6/10.