oohs and aahs -- but no, uh, arc

Rating: 5/10 (29 November 2017)

A dead movie, like a dead language, can be an aggregate of exquisite details.
'Barry Lyndon' is two movies with an intermission: 100 minutes to show the rise of an ambitious Georgian-era social-climbing Irish ruffian; 80 minutes to show his fall. The rise comprises his hard-scrabble youth and treacherous usurpation of aristocratic English privilege, the fall his comeuppance via the revenge of those he wronged.
Nobody's sympathetic. Everybody's a scoundrel, a shallow heir or heiress, a toady, a soldier reduced to brutality by brutal treatment.
A dead movie, like a dead body, can be exquisitely dressed, painted, and presented.
Achingly beautiful images, unbelievable luminescence scene to scene. Life in the 18th century according to Kubrick was endless dullness in lovely landscapes, punctuated by war, duels, births and deaths, financial ruin, sociopolitical intrigue – and the occasional raging outburst. Kubrick breaks it down – every context for every upset of mundane life two hundred years past is painstakingly laid out. Nothing is a surprise. To be fair, Kubrick uses Brechtian title cards for each section, telling us this is what he intends to show us. But even Brecht made us feel for his protagonists, intended audience alienation effect notwithstanding. And Brecht astonished and surprised us. Kubrick gives these people something like a dry, old-school National Geographic anthropologic treatment – no small feat – but is it sustainable as a narrative film? One senses Kubrick was trying to give the audience a mimetic experience – the snail's pace and anti-dramatic structure of the film intended to let us live in the 18th-century for a few hours. It is a noble experiment . . . but it fails. It is impossible to engage with this film for very long.
This viewer has not read the source novel by William Makepeace Thackery, but is highly doubtful the characters, or narrative point of view, lack a scintilla of wit – as is the case with Kubrick's film. No bawdy jokes, no farcical situations, no banter or games to see anybody through drudgery and war. Anybody living the life presented here would quickly die of despair or their own hand. I can understand not wanting to replicate, say, the rowdy romp of 'Tom Jones', but it is a mistake to direct actors to confuse a character's shallow exterior for a lack of inner life, or similarly exploit nonactors or actors of little depth -- that cultural pretense leads to amateur acting is hardly an original concept worth three hours beating over the head. No spontaneity here, no idiosyncrasy, no shared ensemble energy as a means to exponential discovery. It's as if Kubrick were trying so hard to avoid acting clichés – or was so cynical about the craft of acting – that he allowed no acting whatsoever; in other words, he attempted to perpetrate a grievous fraud: presenting the supremely titanic artifice of a commercial motion picture sans the artifice of accomplished acting technique.
The title character is Ryan O'Neal, a huge American star in 1975 when this film was made. Sexy, earnest, milk-fed boy next door of limited range, used well in light romantic comedies. Kubrick casts O'Neal as something of a cypher, showing little to no emotional stake in the events of his character's life – but capable of great rage when provoked by an attack on his dignity. Otherwise there is no passion in the man.
Marissa Berensen as the aristocrat Lyndon targets and snags is a striking fashion model, giving a striking fashion model's performance: the light, the camera love her to death. But a work of art should demystify a character such as hers. This film tells us she barely exists beneath the skin, yet continually thrusts her at us without revealing any information – to the point of annoyance. As with Berensen, Kubrick's use of O'Neil mystifies his character: we must accept that he is the archetypal social climber – and, for lack of much substantial information in the film, define him by preconceptions. Both are like cartoon or sitcom characters who go through dire situations yet barely register their effects. This makes for repetition, frustration, and, ultimately giving up on the film altogether.
Kubrick's tight rein on lightweight O'Neal and novice Berensen is palpable, his artistic gun at their head barely outside the frame. The only actors allowed any room to play are Leonard Rossiter as a pompous military officer/jilted suitor, Patrick Magee as a high-stakes con artist all silk brocade and garish make-up over the small pox scars, and Murray Melvin's prissy tutor-priest. Rossiter was Kubrick's wonderfully sketchy Russian Ambassador in '2001: A Space Odyssey', Magee was Alex's obsessive main tormentor in 'A Clockwork Orange'. Melvin here is playing to type: he had a nice career interpreting crypto- and not-so-crypto gays through the 1960s and 70s (see 'The Devils' and 'A Taste of Honey').
The movie won numerous awards for design, costumes, cinematography – and rightly so. Breathtaking visuals. Innovative technology allowed illumination of several scenes by candles alone. The early war sequences are consistent with Kubrick's career-long critique of that institution, and provide something of an apologia for a creature like O'Neil's protagonist, who decides marrying great wealth is the only antidote to a soldier's rotten life. That great wealth and its possessors only exist by perpetuating continual war is a strong theme of the film not lost on this viewer.
'Barry Lyndon' is a work worth seeing because it is by a master, and it it is an odd creature indeed. It contains genius. But it is auteurism run amok.