Proper context

Rating: Null/10 (3 September 2013)

Another of Stanley's love letters to humanity. BARRY LYNDON is a tale of biological robots locked in a feedback loop, a period piece with its ossified guts ripped out to show us the ghost world beneath. Supercharged in that special Kubrickian way, it makes up for glacial pacing and austere remoteness with having every detail fine tuned for maximum aesthetic wattage; it's simply f*&king gorgeous, you can feel how fussed over every single square inch is. I can see why a lot can't stand this waxwork quality, even if that was kinda the whole point.
Ryan O'Neil is the perfect blank as Barry, forever out staged by the scenery, swallowed up by the vast expanse of setting his rags-to-riches story is set in; the stage outdoes the players. Through sheer luck he ascends the social ladder to high humorless society, becomes a gentlemen hob knobbing with the lizard elite only to lose it all in one fell swoop; his fortune, his title and his son. What goes up must come down, hard. It's only through tragedy, by falling that Barry-bot steps out of the storybook canvas Kubrick has entombed everyone in to act like a real boy, cutting the puppet strings and being spontaneous. Of course that's going against the no-flow and he's promptly ruined for it yet it's a triumphant moment just the same, a show of heart from a tin man.
BARRY LYNDON is a treasure trove of painterly images from a career renowned for them. Like a novel there is constant narration that's priceless for its incongruity with the movie. It's always undercutting the scenery, deflating the pomposity of what's shown in its hilariously dry Englishness; the bored voice of an all seeing eye. As brutally honest as the end title card is though BARRY LYNDON still cuts deep, the movie dares you to give a sh*t by constantly drumming in how pointless everything is, how lifeless and devoid of intrinsic spark these pretend humans are in all their fabulous ornamentation. Their castles, their costumes, their almighty manners: everything burns.
Kubrick is as cold as Eskimo pie but not in a spiteful, thumbing his nose way. His coldness was only functional, that of G_d peering down on ants (zoom out x10,000,000). He's not pointlessly sadistic like a lot of other 'warm' filmmakers I can think of and his dearth of spontaneity matched his pet themes perfectly. There's still moments of humanity in his museum movies, especially here where the opulent surroundings outshine the bloodless characters and their soul-sucking homogenization; those moments are hard earned. I dare you to keep a dry eye through the ending even if it's only drones going about the motions. Still, strewing clockwork guts across the screen, Kubrick will have none of the typical Hollyweird myth-making reassuring the audience how precious it is. He exposes the infinite loop human bots are stuck in, that thing called 'history'.
More films should really emphasize backdrops; it's disillusioning and reassuring all at once. OK computer?