Only Stanley Kubrick could make this one work. Robert Horton explains why it's one of the Great Ones.
Truths begin to fall away.
You grow up assuming that Yankee Stadium will always stand, or that Frank Sinatra will always be alive, or that every year there will be another new novel by Elmore Leonard. And at some point you realize that these things won't always be true. One such truth is Stanley Kubrick's status as The Olympian Filmmaker. Yet something beautiful and human shines out of Barry Lyndon , this coolest and most controlled of films. A roguish 18th-century Irish lad rises in the world, only to receive his comeuppance.