Gorgeous, brilliant, ironic, lifeless.

Rating: 7/10 (30 May 2004)

Goes down as Kubrick's Last Great Movie. (Though seeing as how he made only three more movies, it's not as if there was a long decline.) *Barry Lyndon* was a return to form, after that wretched *Clockwork Orange* -- meaning, he refrains here from allowing his general misanthropy to get the better of his judgment. The director managed to relocate a sense of rueful pity for humanity with this work.
Kubrick takes the old tale of the Rake's Progress and transforms it into something altogether new. Based on an unimportant (and unread) early novel by Thackeray, *Barry Lyndon* chronicles the rise of a middle-class Irish lad from British soldier to professional gambler to master of a great estate via an advantageous marriage. It's set in the 18th century, beginning roughly with the Seven Years War and ending rather ominously in 1789 (Kubrick tantalizes us with this important date at the end of the film, but we're not sure what to make of it). While Kubrick's presentation of the period is peerless, his main character is a liability that drags the film down from masterpiece-level to merely excellent. Most reviewers have attributed this failing to Ryan O'Neal, but astute students of Kubrick's films know better. This director, throughout his career, was simply unable to achieve what Harold Bloom has called the "Shakespearean difference", that is, the creation of character. (Name a memorable main character from a Kubrick film that isn't a total caricature.) Redmond Barry (later Barry Lyndon, after his marriage) is an intellectual's IDEA of a Rake: we're TOLD that he's a scoundrel, but Kubrick can't be bothered to put in all that hard work that's required to SHOW us the evidence. He's far more interested in Mood and Theme -- not always such a bad thing in and of itself, but subservience of Character to these other concerns leaches away the impetus for great drama. Even the scenes in which Barry is cheating on his wife are merely snapshots -- and stylized ones at that, in the typically overintellectualized manner of Kubrick -- designed to inform us that, yes, he's a scoundrel. But in any case, Barry "reforms" pretty quickly once he's married, so that later accusations of his "brutality" seem unfair. Doubtless this is because Kubrick was going for High Tragedy rather than a character study. But the greatest artists manage to combine both efforts.
While I've went on about the film's main faults, don't let these distract you from checking out the film. *Barry Lyndon* is very much worth your time. This is Kubrick's most wittily ironic, and most cleverly constructed work. One marvels at the director's repeated and varied use of his chosen motifs: card-playing, horses, lost loves, and most particularly, duels. Duels between man-and-man involving pistol and ten paces; duels between man and social caste; duels between man and state; duels between states. The overriding mood is unending, repetitious struggle. Barry's antagonists are legion in the film: he's always fighting somebody, or struggling against insuperable barriers in order to achieve his goals. The movie also has something to say about tribal warfare and what Jean Renoir called "the rules of the game". Barry can play cards, but he doesn't know how to play by the rules of the tribe he wishes to join. Hence his misfortunes in the second half of the movie.
Kubrick, under the guise of a romantic period piece, offers us a sterile world in which human beings are denied the capacity for change and growth. The Tribe circles its wagons; tragedy is repetitious. Throughout most of the film, any scene indicating sentiment is immediately trashed by an ironic follow-up. (It's not until late in the film that Kubrick takes things seriously and drops the ironic mask.) All the while, monotonous pieces by Handel and Schubert drone on the soundtrack, underlining the repetitiousness of the entire work. (Handel's "Saranbande" is constantly in the background during the final half-hour.) Kubrick even has his narrator "spoil" the ending with 40 minutes still to go, because he wants us to marvel at his design rather than be held hostage to the plot (which, given its episodic nature, admittedly isn't much).
Finally, Kubrick broke new technical ground with *Barry Lyndon* with the use of camera lenses that, for the first time, could capture indoor light without professional arc lamps and such. The interior shots in the candlelight are just that -- no fancy lighting tricks. Every period-piece owes this film a debt. In fact, most have failed to live up to this movie's example . . . but then, most directors aren't as nuttily obsessed with visual composition as Kubrick was. The final result is a period film that hasn't aged: with the one exception of the then-trendy use of camera zooms (instead of cuts), the film would look as if it were made today instead of in 1975. This is truly one of the most beautiful-looking movies ever made.