Much less than I'd hoped for

Rating: Null/10 (6 December 2001)

I tried to enjoy this movie, I really did. I'd seen the doco about Kubrick at which it was so highly praised, recently seen "Dr Strangelove" again (and found it much funnier than the first time) and an eponymennial screening of "2001" (which made much more sense than the first time).
Well, if you liked those, don't be sure you'll like "Barry Lyndon". Some of its conventions were just sickly: the candlelight (did they *always* have a little candelabrum on the table just in front of them, and did nobody ever put a candle out?), the postcard-perfect scenes - with very similar rolling hills in Ireland, England, Belgium and Prussia - so well suited to Ryan O'Neill's bland prettiness.
The overworked narrator reminded us that this is adapted from a Great Book, and his words hinted that we were missing a story much better told in print.
And the pace! Nearly three hours it lasts. I wasn't expecting an action movie, and it came from a more leisurely time, but we seemed doomed to see many people enter a scene in the distance and proceed slowly, slowly into the foreground, or the reverse.
If this represents a revolutionary approach to narrative, count me out. Sorry.
Schubert didn't write his Op. 100 trio until about 50 years after the events of the story.
(eponymennial: in the year it was named after)