Overlooked Gem

Rating: 9/10 (5 February 2002)

When you think of Kubrick, what do you think of? Strangelove? Clockwork? Shining? If you are like most people, you don't think about Lyndon. That's a shame. Because it is every bit as magnificent, splendid, and powerful as anything else in his canon.
The true genius of Kubrick, according to Spielberg, is that he never made the same film twice. Because of this, comparing one Kubrick film to another is a tricky situation. It also means that, for just about everyone, there is going to be a Kubrick film that just doesn't do it for you. [If there's such a one for me, I haven't found it yet.] Kubrick didn't make very many films, all things considered, but he managed a breadth most directors will never reach.
"Barry Lyndon" is Kubrick's foray into the costume drama. It is the most realistic such film I've ever seen. I don't mean that the story, plot, or characters are realistic (certainly they are, but there are loads of costume dramas realistic in that sense), but the cinematography, through Kubrick's innovative use of light and specially constructed lenses, makes this film look utterly remarkable. I really feel as if I'm watching things that are actually happening.
Ken Adam did the production design on this film (as he had done on "Dr Strangelove"), and once again he scores a triumphant victory. Also the costumes, the locations. Every visual element of the film is a remarkable achievement, and would make this film worthy of the highest praise.

So why has the film become such a curiosity? Why are otherwise film-literate people, who are intimately familiar with many of Kubrick's other films, totally unaware of "Barry Lyndon"? Apparently, the story isn't very good. Well, that's what I gather from reading the other reviews here. The story isn't very good. It's boring and too long.

Too long. Of all the things anyone has ever said about a film, "too long" annoys me the most. As if length were a primary characteristic of a film. It's not. Length is simply of function of what the director has chosen to include in the film, and the pace. Certainly, "Barry Lyndon" has a very slow pace. But I consider this a strength. Like "2001", "Barry Lyndon" tells its story through a very different narrative approach. The basic story is extremely simple. If you read a transcript of the narration and dialogue, you would see the simple, skeletal framework of the plot. And for a 3 hour film, it is a very thin framework. But because the pace is so slow, Kubrick enables the actors to convey a far more complicated palette of emotions than the thin story would otherwise allow, and they convey these emotions through superb subtlety. A long look, and pensive sigh... A ten second shot of Lady Lyndon with Lord Bullingdon in her arms, perfectly still, unchanging expression. These shots, these "long", "boring", "pointless", shots reveal so much more about the story and the characters than our hypothetical transcript ever could.
But why choose such a way as that to reveal the full depths of the story? Because Kubrick was a film-maker. Any given story can be told in any number of ways. As Kubrick was telling this particular story (one which had already been told in novel form) in cinematic form, he chose to rely, in so far as possible, on purely cinematic tools. Dialogue is common to film, radio, and prose. But the effect of that glorious shot of Lady Lyndon and Lord Bullingdon, which is only one of so many beautifully composed shots dripping with emotion, could not have been communicated in any other medium.
That is why Kubrick is such a great filmmaker. He understood the unique tool he had in the medium of film and he shared its power. He stripped this film of as much as he could that is not unique to film, and left us with a glimpse at what film, and only film, is capable of bringing to the art of narrative fiction.
Also, the film has a wonderfully dry, ironic wit which is all too often overlooked.