Kubrick's ‘Barry Lyndon,’ a masterclass in bringing a filmmaker's vision to life

Count me in as somebody with taste that knows something about film and finds this movie a waste of talent. The real Kubrick underrated masterworks are paths of glory and the killing.

This movie is like animated XVIII century paintings, for that reason alone it can be considered a masterpiece.

You have the right to not like the story, on my side I liked it very much.

I wish people on here wouldn't downvote just because they don't agree with an opinion.

I somewhat agree with you. I don't find Barry Lyndon to be in the class of the three films you list. I think it's a good film--and a tour de force with respect to cinematography and general production design--but may of the criticisms leveled at it when it first came out still apply.

So you believe people who say they like this movie are actually lying?

Personally I found it remarkable for it's involved story, excellent cinematography, the classical music, the staging. His selection of classical performances was so enchanting and perfect for me. You could take stills from the movie and frame them, they're so well constructed and composed. Yes you could say the story was not as enthralling at times as the movies you mentioned, I found it dragged a bit, but Kubrick films are often very slow moving. https://stillsfrmfilms.wordpress.com/2013/11/12/barry-lyndon...

The film is brilliant because he managed to do things that no one was doing. He filmed scenes with only candle lighting using lenses made for NASA. He managed to get a movie that looked like a living painting, because of the lighting and the lenses. Then it also has that emotionless Kubrick acting. That brilliant emotionless acting mixed with the lighting was perfect for the painting look. I personally loved it just for it's theme song, which is pulled from a Schubert Trio, which is so unbelievably cool. Not a typical hollywood composed theme. He didn't alter the trio to fit the movie, he used the theme of that movement of the trio without editing. Of course it isn't the whole piece. It is an unusual movie in that it doesn't have the typical flow of a movie which makes it unusual to watch. Instead you are following this guy through his entire life, as he changes as a person. It's not a little date night romcom, it's a sit down and experience this film and think about it for days film. That flow may make it seem boring or mysteriously praised. But in the end it is a good as people say it is.

  Every time this film is mentioned, I'm reminded of the old fairly tale, the
  emperor’s new clothes.
  
  Everyone, absolutely everyone who has good taste and knows something about movie
  making seems to worship this film. Only those who are unfit for their positions,
  stupid, or incompetent don't like it.

I haven’t seen Barry Lyndon, so I can’t agree with you or explain why it’s enjoyable as well as beautifully constructed. But not enjoying such a film is certainly no cause for contempt. There are lots and lots of things like this. Not everyone enjoys sitting for five hours of Siegfried. Mahler isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, no matter how educated their ear. And Gravity’s Rainbow... Well the HN discussion of the book provoked much the same type of discussion.

A lot of the social behaviour you seem to be lamenting are associated with the fact that many such works of art require a certain education and progressive experience to appreciate. Bebop just sounds “frenetic” to the ear that hadn’t been listening to Swing for a decade. Modal Jazz sounds ”pleasant but meandering” to the ear that hadn’t been listening to Bebop for a decade. And so forth.

But when you have the foundation in place, you appreciate the way Bebop broke from Swing, and Modal broke from Bebop. But without the foundation, you get nothing. So some people, being tribal and wanting to self identify through contempt for others, will measure your fitness for belonging to their club by whether you have the educated ear to appreciate Free Jazz, or some such.

It’s not that much different than looking down our noses at people who don’t appreciate the “obvious” brilliance of higher-kinded types and monads. Sometimes, people don’t appreciate them because they don’t have the education in place (whether formal or not). But sometimes, they have the education but it simply doesn’t “click.” There is taste and personal experience involved, not just an absolute standard of aesthetic appeal.

In my own case, I had trouble with appreciating the albums “In a Silent Way” and “Bitch’s Brew” when I first heard them, even though I was studying Jazz and thought I had the right stuff to get into them. I thought I understood intellectually what was going on, but nevertheless they didn’t speak to my heart.

I came back to them perhaps a decade after I first heard them, and as it happened, I began to feel them, not just listen to them. But that doesn’t happen to everyone. If it doesn’t, there is no need to beat someone up over it, but then again, it doesn’t mean that the work of art is a fraud, and that everyone is standing around a blank canvas marvelling at the brush strokes the artist chose not to employ.

In the end, a movie like Barry Lyndon fits the old quip:

  A “classic” is a book everyone wants to have read, but few want to read.

The people raving about it are the few that wanted to see it, saw it, and liked what they saw, while most of the world wants to have seen it. That’s no insult to anybody, so please don’t take offence.

---

p.s. This is a a whole ‘nother topic, but the expression “good taste” does not actually refer to taste that is good in some absolute sense. It is a term that refers to having taste in common with the upper classes of society at a particular time and place. Lots and lots of excellent and fine things were not “in good taste,” and many things in good taste are now thought of quite poorly. “Good taste” is a measure of fashion more than anything else.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste_%28sociology%29

I'm going to be a bit vague, but if you haven't seen the movie, don't read this.

Its an epic movie that takes you through a persons life. Its great because it plays with your emotions. The audience starts out rooting for him and, and least I was, get impressed when he succeeds. Then you experience his decline and get a feeling for how success changes him. He makes some bad decisions, but its easy to understand why. The mistakes start to pile up and he quickly becomes someone most people loathe and he becomes the antagonist in someone's story.

Lots of movies do similar things, but I thought Barry Lyndon was incredibly engrossing and it actually succeeds in this crazy character development that might feel trite in most cases. It was also shot extremely well and the film score is fantastic.

I've always thought Wolf of Wall Street as a modern day version of Barry Lyndon, but with more flash and less substance.

I love a three of the films you just mentioned, but for different reasons. The thing all of these films have in common is that they are intensely and carefully constructed, and what I admire most in Kubrick is his ability to create singular worlds. I actually think that as a narrative story teller he is lacking, he just makes it work by having his characters act as if they are in some sort of trance.

I can understand why you wouldn't like Barry Lyndon: it is slow, and fixated on a very idiosyncratic corner of history/lit history. I think this comes down to a matter of personal taste, some people don't enjoy spending time with the characters and the places on screen here, and some people do.

With regards to 'omniscient narrator', I agree it is almost always ill suited to film, but for me in Barry Lyndon the world was so indebted to that of the novel, that the narrator didn't seem odd or out of place.

At the same time, I think anyone would be hard pressed to argue that the film isn't a landmark, technical achievement. I can't think of another film which looks like a moving 18th century painting. The film is also, consciously, epic, dealing with a wide spread of characters, locations and lives, fitting them into a framework which at the very least attempts to say something about 'the big things' (mortality, love, society etc etc). Even if it seems pretentious and vapid to some, it doesn't to others. It also feels singular (though so does all of Kubrick). I would be willing to bet you could take any frame and it would be recognizable out of context.

I actually think Barry Lyndon has aged better than 2001 and Dr. Strangelove, and maybe that's why it receives more love now than back when it was released. Barry Lyndon and the Shining don't have any special effects which look laughable in a modern context (men in ape costumes, psychedelic colours, falling against a greenscreen backdrop etc). 2001 and Dr. Strangelove are still immensely enjoyable, and valuable, and it's remarkable they haven't aged worse, but they still look like they were made when they were.

Sorry for being a pompous arse, I actually can really see where you're coming from, just trying to argue the other side :)

I watched this film without any previous exposure to sentiments about it, or Kubrick. I chose to watch it based purely on the title. I still came to the conclusion that it is one of the greatest films ever made.

* The photography is singular, this is self-evident * The acting is outstanding

Complaints usually then come down to story and direction.

I interpret the direction as perfectly executing my understanding of Kubrick's intended impact: Contrast between character (developed through the story) and sentiment.

A sentiment engineered with all the available emotional tools:

* The tone of the narration * Slow pacing * Divine Music * Lavish Costume

All intended to convey the message - "Take this very seriously". Imparting a gravity to every word and action. Be it glory, or tragedy.

What then of the contrasting element - Character?

As you say - The protagonist is unlikable. This wasn't a mistake. He's a selfish, spineless, jerk, of no inherent merit, who raises himself to mediocre heights through questionable behaviour, morals, and company only to be struck down again. A parody of the Greek tragic form.

What does that leave us with? A comedy!

It's a simple proposition, a farcical contrast between story content, and story form. Told completely straight-faced and dry. In this light I find it to be one of the most original and daring pieces of cinematic story-telling I know of.

The punchline to the joke, however, seems to be that I've never found another person who shared this perspective, and most seem to take the the sentiment seriously and at face value... You seem like you might be someone who enjoys looking at it from this angle.

I haven't yet read or watched any reviews of this film or the book it was based on, and was surprised to see the film being discussed on Hacker News, so in the tradition of a good internet commenter, I'm writing this comment before having read the article.

I'll go ahead and read OP's link now and see if any of my ideas are vindicated :)

> Why is this film brilliant? I found it unbearable. Half the story is told by an omniscient narrator (a device that simply doesn't work in a film), the story advances at a glacial pace, the protagonist is completely unlikable. Of course the backstory would feel somewhat pompous and dated, based on a 19th century book, but in my uninformed, incompetent opinion bringing this old fashioned feel unchanged to a 20th century medium didn't do either of them any favors.

> Kubrick made a number of classics that have either aged very well or become a cherished document of the time when they were made. Can someone please explain to me why this movie belongs up there with the Shining, 2001 and Dr. Strangelove?

To be honest, I've repeatedly watched all the films you mention, and Barry Lyndon is by far my favorite. For me, it's the rare film that actually immerses you into a different historical era. Most "historical" productions take contemporary people and attitudes and put them into old costumes (for a particularly egregious example, watch an episode of The CW series "Reign"). Barry Lyndon actually takes you to a different age; and, you're correct, to our sensibilities it seems pompous and dated (to their sensibilities, we'd probably appear presumptuous and uncivilized). The movie does great justice to the Thackeray book - it brings it to life in its original form, instead of shoehorning it into modern sensibilities. On top of that the camera work, music etc. is just icing on the cake. I believe that allowing yourself to be engrossed by a film like Barry Lyndon, reaching the point where you understand the characters and can relate to their motivations, is a very rewarding experience, comparable in many ways to traveling to a strange but wonderful new country where people tick to much different rhythms.

Haven't seen the movie, but I suspect from the comments that it's a cinematographic 'tour de force' with many technicalities which makes it a wonder among cinema initiates. It's probably like listening to some fusion-jazz-bebop improv: to the 'non-musician' it might just sound like noise, but musicians are in awe of the mastery of the instruments in such music.

I couldn't get into it, but I have trouble with really anything set before the 20th century. The accents and the wigs and everything, I just hate it and find it boring.

I thought it a beautifully filmed movie. I didn't think that Ryan O'Neal was up to the job. He was a very handsome man, but mostly appeared to be dazed.

Barry Lyndon is probably an example of a film that has become admired over time. Although, to be fair, it was admired when it was released--a lot of people just didn't love it all that much. It was quite the technological tour de force with respect to the authenticity (e.g. shooting by candlelight) and cinematography but it was, with some justification, criticized for being a rather "cold" film, as Kubrick films tend to be.

Yes. This gave me chills. It still does.

Or you could use a Sony a7S, which is perfectly capable of shooting films on normal lenses with no other lighting but candle light.

A significant portion of my short film "HOWTO: Demon Summoning" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZoiva3DfI8) was shot with nothing but candle light last year. Four tealights, to be exact.

We just used a regular f/1.4 50mm Contax/Yashica lens on the a7s body, running at 40,000 ISO or therabouts.

The footage was a bit noisy as it came out of the camera, not aided by my shooting in LOG format without exposing as high as I should have done, but once we ran it through the Neat Video noise filter plugin it looks great.

I wrote a bit about the process over here: http://www.strangecompany.org/lessons-i-learned-from-my-firs...

I think this is true, but that the beauty is meant to serve as a farcical contrast to the triviality and lack of meaning in Barry's story. The point was really driven home with the final scene of the story being accompanied by Handel's Sarabande, a work of monumental gravitas implying transcendent tragedy, when in reality Barry was a nobody, a jerk with no morals or conviction hardly deserving a second thought.