Kubrick's perfect portrait of Lyndon's rise and fall

Rating: 9/10 (8 January 2002)

`Barry Lyndon' is a delight for the eyes and the ears: the XVIII century landscapes are exquisite in their colors and light; the indoor sets, with perfect decoration and costume design, are marvelous to the minutest nuances; and the music, from Bach to Schubert, is sublime. But what is most impressive in Kubrick's movie is his capacity to convey melancholy and inexorability to portray the tragic story of Thackeray's anti-hero Barry Lyndon, a gifted but poor Irishman who will impersonate different roles, crossing several countries and facing continuous disenchantment, only to meet his gloomy fate in the end. The deliberate subdued acting, the narrator's subtle irony and detachment, Ryan O'Neal's sad eyes and impassive face and, most of all, the slowpacing of both editing and acting, all converge to provide a sense of grief and doom that mark this masterpiece. Kubrick's genius can be better observed by the way he conceives of and stages the three duels that are the turning points of the story. `Barry Lyndon' is the ultimate example of how a movie with a conventional, linear narrative can be brilliant in its own way (9/10).