See The Pretty Pictures

Rating: 6/10 (31 January 2006)

The same things that make "Barry Lyndon" interesting are what make it problematic. Long drawn-out scenes, lingering close-ups of stiff-faced actors, no rooting interest, a sudden personality shift (for the worse) in the lead character, and minute attention to period detail that seems director Stanley Kubrick's main reason for making this.
Kubrick shoots his 18th-century costume drama, based on the William Makepeace Thackeray novel, with nods in the direction not of other filmmakers but rather period painters like Gainsborough and Hogarth. His frame, often moving but slightly in the course of a scene, captures moments of wondrous, intense beauty which seem to defy gravity in their not-quite static state, such as a woman in her bath or a man riding across a country path. For that, it is a unique film, one that transfixes many still.
Still, it's a hard film to love, at least for me, starting with the main character, a young Irishman named Redmond Barry (Ryan O'Neal) forced to flee his homeland after a duel who gets himself trapped in not one but two armies in the middle of the Seven Years' War. He escapes with a tricky gambler to Belgium where he meets Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson) who falls in love with him and offers him an opportunity to rise in the highest realms of society, if only he can control his mendacity and bitter temper.
Not a lot to love there, and some say it's either O'Neal's fault or Kubrick's for casting him. O'Neal is in typically wooden form, but this is one film that serves such an acting style, as the cast here converses less in dialogues than colloquies while barely moving so much as an eyebrow so as not to disturb Kubrick's delicately candlelit interiors. O'Neal surprises on occasion, especially late in the film when he delivers a crying scene as powerful as Russell Crowe's in "Gladiator." Once you get past his weak Irish accent, you may find him as good a man for the job here as anyone.
There's also nice character work by Murray Melvin as the dour minister Mr. Runt, Leon Vitali as Lady Lyndon's son by a prior marriage, and Steven Berkoff, unrecognizable as the same man who menaced Eddie Murphy in "Beverly Hills Cop", as a foppish dandy who trifles with Barry to his regret. Patrick Magee, often over-the-top on screen, nicely underplays his part of the gambler, Barry's tutor for a time. Kubrick's work with the child actors here showcases his exceptional, undercommented work in that department.
This is one Kubrick film where there is little overacting. It's hard to overact when you can't even move. Kubrick is so bent on making with his pretty pictures that any droplets of vitality dribble off the screen. Audience identification, too, is hard, except I think some of the charm of this film is in how alien it is, presenting a world we think we know in an askew but somehow more real-seeming way than ever before.
It's a triumph in "Barry Lyndon" how fine and layered a visual scheme Kubrick is able to put on screen, and the story, especially in its first half when Barry is on the rise, has its compelling moments. A mordant narration by Michael Hordern that carries on for the length of the film seems intrusive at first but gradually turns out a rather sublime counterpoint to the action on screen. You come to need Hordern after a while. At a little over three hours, one feels like one is sitting through Barry's wastrel life in real time. Some may see that as an accomplishment, but you can only stare so long at a painting, even a masterpiece, before yawning sets in. It sets in more quickly here.