Kubrick's painterly odyssey

Rating: 10/10 (3 December 1998)

The hallmark of a Stanley Kubrick film has always been the ability to transport the viewer to a uniquely rendered cinematic world of meticulously crafted detail and thought provoking themes. Moreover, Kubrick continually creates a new visual language with which to communicate in very uniquely appropriate terms. Certainly this is true with "Barry Lyndon." Kubrick's painterly odyssey of 18th century European society is presented on an epic canvas. What makes it unique and ultimately haunting is how Kubrick views his subjects literally as figures in an artist's landscape "trapped" within a pre-determined frame. The tableau unfolds continually in scene after scene that begins with a close-up and slowly pulls back to reveal the "big picture" all the while an ironic narrator tells of their upcoming fates. Kubrick's compositions are evocative of the era paintings of Hogarth, Gainsborough and Watteau rendered on film with real candlelit interiors as opposed to artifical movie lighting.
This elegiac portrait of the transience of time is a uniquely poetic piece of cinematic art.