My favorite Kubrick!

Rating: 10/10 (26 January 2005)

So being a Kubrick fan is a trendy thing these days (and has been for quite a while), but you can always spot someone who's not that serious about it when they tick off their favorites (invariably 2001, Clockwork Orange, and Dr. Strangelove) and omit any mention of Barry Lyndon. It may not be the best Kubrick, but it's probably my favorite of all of them.
Ironically Thackeray's book, which was written as comedy/satire, was not really an epic. Stanley obviously thought otherwise! For three hours we move up (and then back down) the social ladder in 18th century Europe, along the way getting to see a loquacious highwayman, a battle in the Seven Years War, Hardy Krueger as (shockingly!) a German military officer, a lot of people in chalky makeup with beauty marks, Leon Vitali puke, and a Marisa Berenson hairstyle that's got to have a "wingspan" of 18 inches. Kubrick rivets together the somewhat rambling plot line with two duels which he places at the beginning and ending of the film, one comic, the other harrowing and disturbing. He also does a neat job of turning the tables and turns the hero into the villain and elevates the twitchy Lord Bullingdon (Vitali) as the true hero, despite portraying him earlier in the film as a sniveling coward--an outcome that even Thackeray probably wouldn't have seen coming! The real star of Barry Lyndon is the visual look. After seeing this film you will never again see an 18th/19th century period piece the same way again, because after this film, done entirely in natural light and candlelight, the blaze of modern electric lights on studio sets will be all the more glaring. Every frame of this movie is as meticulously designed as an 18th century oil painting. That's Kubrick for you. The torture that he and his cast and crew must have gone through to get all of this stuff right is the viewer's windfall. I can't take my eyes off Barry Lyndon. Clearly a masterpiece, and criminally underrated.