Barry Lyndon

There are some things people do just for the sake of being able to say they've done them; reading War and Peace, for example, or Proust. The cinematic - and less time-consuming - equivalent of this is watching Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. Based on a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, Barry Lyndon is a Seven Years War period drama famous for being lit almost exclusively by natural light (i.e. sun, moon, and candles), and also for being just over three hours long and rather unpleasant. A lot has been written about Barry Lyndon, the tale of an Irishman of no consequence who believes it's his destiny and right to be a gentleman and embodies the philosophy of the ends justifying the means, but since a picture is worth a thousand words - indeed, this film is one of the more obvious extensions of that belief - let's just say that Barry Lyndon can be summarized as follows:

No, really. Actor Ryan O'Neal holds that exact expression for the majority of the film, and it pretty well says everything there is to know about Barry. However, to put that in context:



The story of Barry Lyndon, at least as I interpret it from Kubrick's interpretation, is that of small people in a big world. Barry is a man of no consequence who believes he should matter in a material way, but even those who are of consequence in his society come across as insignificant here beside the grandeur of the setting. And it's not an issue of props and furniture - there are plenty of period films with lavish interior sets. I wonder if Kubrick's reliance on natural light was partly meant to emphasize how small one man is on the stage of the Earth. In Barry Lyndon, the settings are more alive than the people. Many critics of this film slam its use of detachment, and its characters are detached, cold, at arm's length from the audience, pitiful blights on a gorgeous backdrop. However, I suspect this is a large part of its point. The film includes a narrator, who fills in crucial information that's not shown and tells us exactly what's going to happen before it happens, further contributing to putting Barry at arm's length by serving as a sort of Greek tragedy Chorus. It's an interesting story that reverses the familiar tale of the nobleman who perpetrates bad behaviour because he believes his position is his divine right, and eschews the other familiar tale of the common man who strives to rise to nobility by being, well, noble.

I have very mixed feelings on the work of Kubrick's that I've seen, and was expecting this film would be little more than a good-looking exercise to slog through, so I'm still surprised by how much I enjoyed it, and how I was consistently engaged instead of bored. However, at the same time, it is little more than a good-looking exercise, the film version of a person who's as devastatingly gorgeous as they are shallow, and it's obvious why many think it's the most boring film ever conceived. It's also an extraordinary production, and I always come away from those feeling good even if the content has left me sobered. Kubrick was notoriously miserable to work with, but those who acted under him gave him what he wanted in the end, and with relatively little dialogue for such a long film, more is said with understated looks than by anyone opening their mouths.

The strangest thing for me was that I felt Barry Lyndon to be just that: understated, matter-of-fact. I accept that many will find that feeling to be odd, at the very least. I felt this film to be more focused on presenting a story than proving a point, yet it had a very strong point to make about human shallowness - it's sort of like a hopeless and nihilistic version of the book of Ecclesiastes. Since it makes profound comments by presenting a protagonist and world that are completely vapid, it's one strange but effective moviegoing experience. The end result for myself was that this film said what it had to say without having the moral/thematic kick in the teeth of stuff like Spartacus or Dr. Strangelove, which is not necessarily a bad thing. There's a part of me that would absolutely watch it again, for example if a friend wanted to see it but didn't want to sit alone for three hours. However, using the paradox I've come to expect from Kubrick, Barry Lyndon takes its theme of small and insignificant people in a big world several steps too far, resulting in an unrelentingly nihilistic story that contradicts the effort and grandeur of its production by being meaningless for the sake of being meaningless. And while that paradox - lots of effort poured into saying nothing matters - may be Kubrick's point, and come to think of it is clearly present in his other work, it's just not my bag, man.

What else can I say? Interesting, gorgeous - one shot between scenes is that famous architectural painting recognized as the first to use proper perspective - and moving quickly enough to feel neither shorter nor longer than it actually is, Barry Lyndon may well become my favourite Kubrick film. But, hey, it's a Kubrick film, and his pacing and baggage aren't for everyone.