Kubrick's best film

Rating: 10/10 (1 February 2013)

I know that the statement 'Barry Lyndon is Kubrick's best film' is controversial. Really his films can't be weighed against each other, and obviously I speak for myself. Although I STRONGLY believe that statement - I will amend it and say simply that it's my favorite film, and yes, I do hold this film in higher regard than any other. Don't ask me why but there's something about it that makes me come back to it year after year, sometimes multiple times a year.. I think it is a miracle of cinema.
It is also a deeply subversive and ironic film that takes your expectations of what a period romance or swashbuckling adventure should be and turns it around, providing you with neither. The opening shots are hazy in the style of a gaudy romance, but this is all quickly undermined when we begin to understand who Barry Lyndon is. He surely is one of the most empty and lazy 'protagonist's ever put to film, so much so that one can hardly call Barry a protagonist as he seems to try so hard to do or succeed at nothing.
But somehow we are entranced by his character, and our fascination grows as the lies he tells and ripples he creates throughout the story begin to affect others. He builds a tower around himself which is always threatening to topple. There is a point near the end of the film where you feel Barry staring off, blinking, as though he has just woken up out of his own dream. It's as if he has no idea how he got there.
The film is even more moving to watch today - the fact that people still call films 'films' when so much is just video.. Watching Barry Lyndon is watching the cinematographic process at its peak. It has to be one of the most beautiful films ever shot, (and one of the most perfectly lit). It's like a painting come to life. I'm saddened to see the medium of film die out in the way that it is, it makes Barry Lyndon feel all the more like a lost treasure. I urge you to see it, it's one of a kind.