Magnificent costume drama from a master director

Rating: 10/10 (26 November 2017)

"Barry Lyndon", William Makepeace Thackeray's tale of the rise and fall of young Irish ne'er-do-well Redmond Barry in late 18th century Europe is brought to the scene by legendary auteur Stanley Kubrick. The cinematography is outstanding as Kubrick was experimenting with a number of high-aperture lenses originally developed for NASA to allow filming in minimal light, allowing him to shoot candle-lighted interiors in ambient light. There are also extremely long-distance wide-angle shots of the English countryside and long-distance pull-back zoom shots. There was some criticism of Ryan O'Neil's limited range as an actor when tasked to play such a complicated and central character and the long film (184 min) moves at a very languid pace (ultimately, not a lot happens), but I found the story interesting and the character development superb. Overall, "Barry Lyndon" is a beautifully crafted 'costume drama' and if a bit of patience is required to see the story through, it is well rewarded.