A malignant fate

Rating: 7/10 (7 July 2016)

The narrator Michael Hordern informs us of the rise and fall of the Irish adventurer Barry Lyndon (Ryan O'Neal) in eighteenth century Europe. It is adapted from William Thackeray's 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon.
It is not a swashbuckling romance of a heroic soldier. The film is book-ended by two farcical duels, the first of which is a set up.
Our anti-hero gets involved in an adolescent love affair with a cousin in Ireland and has to leave suddenly after a duel with a rival who can offer better prospects to her. He gets robbed by an highwayman when fleeing, enlists almost accidentally into the British army, fights in Europe, deserts once, then gets caught and made to fight with the Prussian army where he also later deserts from. Lyndon falls in with unscrupulous companions and gets involved in cheating at card games all over Europe before he marries into wealth. However even that is not enough for him as in his quest to social climb he destroys himself.
It is in some ways one of Kubrick's warmest films helped by cinematography all shot by natural light and candlepower that makes it look like a composition from a painting by Constable, Gainsborough or Reynolds. There is sumptuous art direction the only let down is the almost diffident acting from O'Neal, almost placid to each fortune good or bad the befalls him.
Ryan O'Neal was a big Hollywood name back in the 1970s but his career soon fizzled out. A competent actor but never really a big enduring star. Just observe him in 'A Bridge too Far' and his scenes with Robert Redford who has a much shorter cameo and you wonder why the roles were not reversed.
Maybe Kubrick wanted O'Neal to be aloof and let the supporting characters such as Hardy Kruger, Patrick Magee, Arthur O'Sullivan and Leonard Rossiter to shine. Yet there are elements of comedy in some of the escapades which O'Neal could had taken advantage off and stamped his acting.
Despite the beauty of the visuals this film is overlong at 3 hours. It unfolds at a stately pace and Lyndon slowly reveals himself to be venal who only truly cares about his son. He fritters away his wife's fortune in his quest for acceptance by society until his grown up stepson wreaks revenge and for a moment he shows some humanity in the final duel but it is too late for him.
Kubrick took a little known Victorian novel and made it exquisite in its sharpness and less of a chocolate box costume drama. Acidic but still heartfelt.