Obliquely Napoleonic

Rating: 7/10 (2 November 2012)

In the early 1970s, Director Kubrick wanted to make a film about Napoleon. For various reasons, that effort failed to materialize. But Kubrick put his research on Napoleon and that historical era to good use later, in a story about a fictional character of that same time period, Barry Lyndon, a roguish young Irishman whose ambition and opportunism would carry him into splendorous surroundings of Europe's high and mighty, despite one setback after another.
In "Barry Lyndon" what we get is thus a Napoleon-like character: clever, charming, calculating, and commanding. And we follow this character over an extended period of his life, as he interacts with the grandiose and powerful, en route to a destiny dictated as much by uncontrollable fate as by his own selfish desires.
Given the film's very slow pace, I like the way the unseen narrator explains the plot as it proceeds. Such a script device ensures an overview approach to the story, so that we don't get lost in details. Implicit here is the nullification of both suspense and mystery. The title character's ever-changing circumstances, however prosaic, and his responses to those changes, are what matter. The narrator functions thus as an impartial, emotionless observer, a stand-in for Kubrick himself.
Production values rate quite high as does the cinematography. Interior scenes especially look really good, with those lit candles amid colorful costumes and makeup. Indeed, some scenes convey an air of romanticized unreality, as characters pose like statues in a museum. The classical background music thus completes the Enlightenment-age mood.
"Barry Lyndon" is a period film with colorful costumes and some interesting characters. With a runtime of three hours and a big budget, it comes across as self-conscious and forced. Its stiffness, as displayed in stagy acting and stilted dialogue, renders it hard to like. I found it not particularly entertaining. But the film does succeed at giving viewers a Napoleon-like character, and a pretty good feel for what life must have been like among the aristocratic elite in that time and place.