"Tom Jones" Done Right...

Rating: 10/10 (28 March 1999)

Hard to imagine that the utterly dreadful 1960s version of "Tom Jones" won Best Picture, while "Barry Lyndon" did not... This film was slammed by the critics when it came out ("Slow!" "Boring!" "Ponderous!") but the critics were wrong...
I didn't see "Barry Lyndon" until a year or so ago, but was fortunate to see it in a theatre, the second half of a double feature with "The Duelist" (another excellent film, by the way.) I mention the circumstances, because... despite BL being 3 hours long, and coming after another movie that ran over two hours, at the intermission point, I found myself thinking, "Intermission? Already? But that could only have been about an hour..."
Add on top of this another detail: I loathe Ryan O'Neal -- yet was compelled by his performance here...
Finally, this little double-feature fest came at the end of a l-o-o-o-ong work day, but I was wide awake and fully alert at the end of "Barry Lyndon."
Why? Because Kubrick managed to stuff every scene with full emotional impact, and there's a dueling scene late in the film that has such excruciating emotional stakes, it's utterly heartrending -- managed, by the way, with the entire thing shot from an apparently passive, far away wide-angle, locked-down camera, at a very leisurely pace. Nod to Kubrick's genius -- he does everything in the scene to alienate the audience from what's happening, and yet we're glued to it, gripping our seats, hoping that what happens won't happen, heaving a collective groan of pain when it does.
And, on top of all that, the entire film was shot only with light sources available within the period it takes place -- i.e., candles, candles, candles, or the sun. It was a bold experiment in the early days of fast film, and it works; moreso than almost any film set in the period, we are there. (The only thing that gets close that I can think of off hand is "Revolution," the underrated Al Pacino venture from the early 80s -- but it derives its "you are there" from historical accuracy and detail.)
Anyway, this is all the long way about of saying that "Barry Lyndon" is worth a second look, and a third -- and definitely a first if you've never seen it. Don't let the length scare you, because the story will grab you so fast, you won't notice. Don't let Ryan O'Neal scare you, because everything unlikeable about him works to the advantage of the story here...
And, finally, for you "Clockwork Orange" fans -- watch carefully, my droogies, because the structure of "Barry Lyndon" mirrors the structure of "A Clockwork Orange" perfectly -- and yet tells us an entirely different tale.