The closest thing to Kubrick's unmade "Napoleon"

Rating: 9/10 (7 November 2013)

In "Barry Lyndon" we have echoes of how Stanley Kubrick's great un- made project, a biopic of Napoleon, may have looked and felt. It would have been stately, as "Barry Lyndon" is throughout, with perfectly still shots that linger on faces, or very slow pans and zooms of impeccable, symmetrical sets. It would have been steeped in period details, as "Barry Lyndon" is with its Georgian turns of phrase (a high-society woman is "a woman of great fortune and condition"; to sympathize with another's circumstances is to be "sensible" of them) and its impressive mounds of powdered hair and layers of makeup on both men and women. Classical music would have abounded, as it does in most Kubrick films and no less so here. There would have been warfare on the continent in which soldiers marched against each other in tight, colorful ranks, and intriguing marital relations. The latter might have demanded more sustained attention in the hypothetical Napoleon film than it receives in "Barry Lyndon," where the wife seems forever on the cusp of transmitting some insightful commentary but remains unsatisfactorily cipherous. Had "Napoleon" been made, its lead character would have had a rise-and-fall arc quite similar to Barry's in spite of their very different historical significances (incalculable in Napoleon's case, non-existent in the case of the fictional Lyndon). As it happened, "Barry Lyndon" is the movie we have, and it is a very good one. No other Kubrick work received as many Oscars (four), all of these in recognition of the film's technical accomplishments. Yet among the director's many masterpieces it has had a relatively low public profile. Could calling it "Napoleon" have elevated it into the top tier of his oeuvre in the minds of many fans? The added aura of historical import would have helped, but probably not enough: though the film is very finely-wrought, it lacks the more obvious eye-popping abstractions of a "2001" or the overt improprieties of a "Dr. Strangelove" or "A Clockwork Orange" with which the name Kubrick is and was associated.