The grim, invincible enemy

Rating: 10/10 (5 April 2016)

Barry Lyndon is a visual and technical marvel if there ever was one. Kubrick's infamous desire for perfectionism down to the tiniest details meant shooting to mimic natural light in order to capture the pure essence of the late Baroque period. The iconic candlelight scenes had to be shot with a special lens with a tiny f-stop in order to capture as much of the light possible and cast a faded glow across the scene. But he also had to juggle this with the small depth of field that would contradict the flatness of the compositions which he had so meticulously designed. The use of the zoom out/ins over the dolly is crucial to this process; the zoom allowed Kubrick to preserve the scale in his sets (a zoom would be like blowing up a picture) where a dolly would have marred the perspective. Add to that the gorgeous mise en scène and production design, and the catatonic, still-life quality of the staging and you have the often point of praise that each frame becomes an 18th century painting in itself. So we see a tender close-up of grasped hands or a despondent mourning face, and then outwards, the bigger, colder picture.
These characters seem trapped by the time period and their respective settings. In the first act we see Redmond and how he came to be Barry Lyndon - the impulsive, love-struck warrior that doesn't want to fight but will do it for his personal causes, whether it is to win a lady or save his own skin. And repeatedly as the zoom outs do, in an anti-picaresque way, we see how there are larger elements beyond his comprehension and control which push him towards that high estate, the pinnacle of his 'wealth'; the conspiracy to get him out of the picture of Dora's betrothal, a fellow soldier sneakily offering him choice insults, or the gambling prowess of Chevalier (a sort of play on the idea of luck itself, but it is never Redmond's hand that deals the card). And then in the second act O'Neal's expressionless, one-note performance finds its little niche, drowning his sorrows in drunken stupour, senseless violence and all the marks of a man gone to seed. He stumbles into wealth as easily as he wastefully leaves it, but even in his lowest moment Kubrick does not relent stylistically. The final, detached text seems to confirm this; a smothering and suffocation of the greed and degeneracy of the wealthy aristocratic noble class through stylistic narrative, forgotten in death even as the narrator paints a vivid picture.
It is from this voice-over that the narrative dissonance is created and where Kubrick subverts. In one instance the narrator gives an old cliché; that war read from the comfort of an armchair is much removed from the reality and horror of experiencing it for yourself. And yet the battles in Barry Lyndon are staged beyond realism; the soldiers are arranged in geometrically straight formations in order to cater to Kubrick's zooms, and they march onwards and upwards even as comrades fall all around like they have been programmed to (a thematic counterpoint to Kubrick's envisioned Napoleon). Redmond is the only one to fall back and comfort a friend in his last breathing moments - in the first act he has still that tiny vestige of compassion and humanity. And he parts on decent romantic terms with a lonely German mother during the wartime...Barry Lyndon does not even offer those little condolences, but openly flaunts his infidelity.
Furthering this theme we have a disconnection between the formal narrator and his flowery, historic prose fit for a history book and the way that Kubrick has actually depicted the events of the film. First we have the duels, which are so ridiculous and outlandish in the way they pause at each step for civility and ensure the correct chivalrous procedures have been followed. Their movements are rigid not flashy, and everyone knows when it is over - there is no surprise resurgence or twist. And here you can gleam a little humour too - see how cordial the robbery of Redmond is, and how they seem to cheerfully acknowledge the very meta-fictive script that these incidents seem to follow. In the one instance that Barry does take his own control he is wounded and literally rendered immobile. They are bound by what has already been said of them, or in the case of Redmond's first battle, written over and forgotten altogether. The narrator continually serves to remind us that these events have long been recorded and gathered dust.