Lovely and lush film marred by a weaker script

Rating: Null/10 (7 July 2002)

`Barry Lyndon' is about the rise of Redmond Barry, from a reasonably comfortable Irishman to lavish English gentleman, and his subsequent fall. Barry is an ambitious young man who is, alas, a slave to his own desires which he cannot always keep under control. Along the way these emotions both assist and threaten his well being in matters of live and love.

Ryan O'Neal plays the titular role. As this is a movie spanning many years he plays the character at different ages (and thus, as a young man, doesn't quite look the part). Most of the time he's alright - Redmond Barry is a passionate young man, disciplined only by his driving ambition to be someone important. However I was left somewhat cold by the performance - I never really empathised with him. Partially this is due to Redmond Barry being a very flawed human being, but it also down to O'Neal's somewhat taciturn performance. Other performances are mixed - there's the (overly) cute kid, a `snivelling brat' performance, the hard-nosed mother (a great showing by Marie Kean). The more memorable characters seem to come from the smaller roles, where the actors invest more energy into their pieces.
What helps this movie greatly is the talented work of its director - the legendary Stanley Kubrick. The movie looks gorgeous (again). The cinematography is absolutely incredible - scenes (intentionally) look like rendered paintings. The attention to lighting is breath taking - Kubrick took the ambitious move of using natural lighting for night scenes (no stage lights at all), and it pays off giving candle-lit scenes a real glow and authenticity - small wonder it won an Oscar here. In fact the movie is a brilliant example of a periodical drama - costumes, scenery, background detail all allow you to really absorb the feeling of the area. This is due to Kubrick's meticulous attention to detail, which pays off in other areas - the score is similarly wonderful (deserving the Oscar that it won). Other details - such as the background use of birds in the barn scene - are nicely done. The area that Kubrick perhaps slipped up on was the length - the movie does tend to drag in parts. The pacing is generally fine but there's a sense that certain elements could have been removed in the interest of audience attention. Having said that I was never bored by the movie, primarily because Kubrick's talent helped otherwise boring scenes look interesting.

`Barry Lyndon' is definitely worth viewing - principally to see a talented director at work in a movie that's - for the most part - fairly decent. All the elements considered leads me to pip this at a 7.9/10.