Barry Lyndon Review

I watched Barry Lyndon this weekend, and it immediately went into my favourite movies of all time. It’s a historical drama (a genre I’m not too crazy about) directed by Stanley Kubrick (who I’m kind of crazy about). The story recounts the early exploits and later unravelling of an 18th-century Anglo-Irish rogue and gold digger called Redmond Barry. In the 1750s Kingdom of Ireland, we follow his rags-to-riches-to-rags story as he marries a rich English widow, climbs the social ladder, and assumes her late husband's aristocratic position.

It's interesting to look back on ten years ago and smirk at people wearing skinny jeans, nevermind looking back three hundred years ago and judging elite Europeans for wearing heavy white makeup. The powdered faces and large wigs were not only fashion, but status symbols too, much like designer logos and influencer aesthetics today. The French mocked the English and vice-versa during this period, and Kubrick mocked them all. He laughs at the hollowness of aristocracy and their supposed grandiosity, the meaningless of war and codes of honor, and the ambitions of dumb men. The narrator ends the movie with, "It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid events took place. Good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now." Their absurdity never mattered. They're dead. If humans are still here in half a millennium, I wonder what ridiculous customs they'll mock us for.

Barry Lyndon feels like an alien film. It doesn’t make sense to me how this was even made in the 70s? I watched Victoria recently which stars Franz Rogowski, and I found it uncanny how much he talks like the characters in this movie. It's timeless. Every shot is so incredibly beautiful, it almost feels like a hyper-real world created by AI.
To emphasize, Barry Lyndon was made FIFTY years ago.. wow.. and John Alcott rightfully won an oscar for the cinematography, which has been described as ‘ground-breaking’. Some scenes are shot entirely in candlelight which add to the alien-feel and you can capture the awe of every scene by going to everysingleframe.com/barrylyndon and retrieving a random still. For example:

In the later half of the movie, I was honestly relieved to see green fields appear again after a bombardment of all the sickly pompous makeup, outfits, and finely decorated interiors. The natural landscapes were a breath of fresh air, a contrast to the suffocating decadence portrayed. It's bittersweet that so many of the talented people involved have passed on since the making of this. One of those being Leon Vitali, who passed away in 2022. As Lord Bullingdon, I thought he was amazing to watch, especially in the church scene where subtle expressions suppressed grand feelings of humiliation and resentment! His interesting mannerisms were captivating and I thought his sharp, angular features and piercing gaze reminded me much of the Irish actor Ruth Codd (The Fall of the House of Usher).

In movies of late, I’ve come to dislike when ‘Instagram Face’ or the homogenised Hollywood beauty ideal takes you out of the viewing experience. I dislike, even, when watching the newest big blockbuster and suddenly Willem fucking Dafoe appears. These little moments seem ingenuous because I’m reminded that I’m not watching a story! I’m watching a product and I need to consume these brands. But here, I'm watching an imperfect cast moulded by Kubrick’s drive for authenticity. I didn’t know any of these actors beforehand and they had me completely engrossed with their unique characteristics. Vitali, Murray Melvin, Wolf Kahler, Patrick Magee, and, in particular, how stunning Marisa Berenson was. To some degree, Ryan O’Neal was the poster boy for this after a run of successful movies in the years prior. Yet even O’Neal, with the OG Hollywood face, was used as a tool of irony to hide how much of a loser he really was.

I've opened a big can of worms watching this. A big piece of pop culture I didn't know I was meant to know about. There's so much to unpack. The influences, the references, the cast, the meticulous making-of, and most important, the legacy it has left behind. You can see its DNA all over other period pieces like Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite, (The Favourite has Barry Lyndon written all over it ), Ridley Scott’s The Duellists, and even Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. Directors praise Kubrick’s precise attention to detail and filmmakers see Barry Lyndon as a benchmark for historical accuracy in cinema. Simply enter ‘Barry Lyndon’ into Google Scholar and find 40,000 results come up. That's a legacy.

An overlooked movie at the time, but has since become a foundational stone for modern movies.. and I loved it. How can I add "You're such a Barry Lyndon" to my arsenal of insults?