Superb

Rating: Null/10 (15 July 2000)

Barry Lyndon is not the film that Stanley Kubrick will be remembered by. When it was released it was not a success. The reasons were obvious: typically for Kubrick, the film is detached and cool, its pace is very slow and the main character is not a particularly likable fellow.
However, despite being long, Barry Lyndon is definitely intentionally long and slow. Despite the coolness of the approach, one cannot be unmoved by and uninterested in the characters and their destinies. Barry Lyndon is not a two-dimensional, bad man but a man of contradictions and thus very lifelike.

The film must be the most visually beautiful ever made, the period is carefully brought to life and the fact that the film is slow and in two parts divided by an intermission is making us feel the different understanding of time in the 18th century, as well as Thackeray's novel's form. Superb use of period music supports the actions.
To an MTV generation with a penchant for hyperactive kinetic experiences with with no content and an attention span of a few minutes, this superb work of art will, alas, not be comprehensible.