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Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Written by Stanley Kubrick, from the William Makepeace Thackeray novel
Starring Ryan O’Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Marie Kean
UK, 1975
Rated PG (violence, nudity)
Some spoilers, perhaps...
KUBRICK FLEXES HIS MUSCLE
Barry Lyndon, born Redmond Barry (Ryan O’Neal), insists on being such a gentleman all the time that, though it is no shock, his eventual cruelty and misbehavior while married to the rich Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson) is dismaying and frightening. As a young man, he leaves his home in Ireland, wrongly believing he has killed a captain named Quin, who was the fiancee of his love interest, his cousin Nora. The two participated in an ironically formal gun showdown, the normal ritual of male competition in this era, and Barry’s relatives replaced real bullets with tow so the affluent captain would not be killed and Barry, being a young, forgivable lad, would not be tarnished by a mindless young-jealousy crime. From these awkward, humble beginnings, Redmond, after leaving his home, is stolen from, becomes a soldier, then thieves, cheats, and lies up the social ladder to connive his way to an honorable place as the husband of the wealthy widow socialite Lady Lyndon. He accomplishes all this with a disarming suavity and humorous opportunism.
The film, Barry Lyndon, is a luxurious experience and, like always, Stanley Kubrick takes his sweet time with everything. In this movie, it doesn’t grate on our nerves. The film’s visual splendor actually disguises a very traditional rise-and-fall story of a man’s life. It’s a simplistic, cliched fable, told in the most unconventional way, with lush detail. Lasting over three hours, its first part has an unexpected wry humor about it, the same kind of dark, satirical comedy that coated Dr. Strangelove. Its second part is full of tragedy and drama, so Barry Lyndon ends up feeling a bit like a contorted, contemplative Gone With the Wind. I think it is one of Kubrick’s most accessible films.
The first thing that struck me about this masterpiece was its opaque directness. Kubrick is seemingly straightforward throughout; he uses a narrator (Michael Hordern) and the film is told in chronological order. There is not one fade in, fade out, or dissolve in the whole film, except during the titles. Tony Lawson uses cuts, which give Barry Lyndon a clean atmosphere that looks as if it is without tricks. There is also little camera movement in the entire movie, and when there is (usually during a scene of violence and possible death), it is extremely potent. There’s a removed, detached quality to John Alcott’s overwhelming cinematography, which is appropriate because Barry Lyndon takes on a completely objective perspective that looks at Barry’s life in past tense, with omniscient, matter-of-fact narration. We get the feeling this has all happened before, and that it will happen again. Most overtly, Kubrick, as the film progresses, tells us the gist of everything that’s going to occur in Barry Lyndon’s life before it actually happens. The film’s two parts open with titles, the first being "By What Means Redmond Barry Acquired the Style and Title of Barry Lyndon," and the second, "Containing an Account of the Misfortunes and Disasters which Befell Barry Lyndon." There’s an inevitability to Barry’s life- he’s a cliché of the dangers of opportunism- but the film’s suspense lies in how Kubrick will spring his genius on us. It’s almost like an auteurist exercise, with unexpectedly fun results.
The proving of one’s manliness has been the cause of much of our troubles on this planet, and our Barry lives in this strange, intricate world where it is commonplace to have a gun duel over a woman and over a game of cards. Manhood is proved by idiotic fisticuffs. Barry gladly conforms to these ways, and is an assured dueler, but he has an odd determination to be a gentleman, perhaps because of his devotion to his mother (Marie Kean).
Ryan O’Neal plays Barry as a mischievous Casanova with a kind gallantry, and the portrayal is almost off-the-wall and we feel O’Neal may be mocking his character’s earnestness. Barry, a walking paradox, has a boyish sincerity that he maintains throughout most of the film. He’s a man who can cry. When he refuses a suggestion that he go to Dublin to think things over instead of going through with the gun fight with Captain Quin, and says, "I’d soon go to Dublin as to hell," he does not sneer or even raise his voice, but speaks with the genuineness with which one would charm a lover. When he discovers Quin is marrying Nora and throws a glass at the captain’s head, he doesn’t leave the scene of the crime. He’s even a sincere, responsible criminal. Actors are hardly ever the highlights of Kubrick films (except in Dr. Strangelove), and O’Neal is by no stretch of the imagination a great actor comparable to Brando or Welles. His performance has a tendency to wobble in effectiveness, but he can always rely on his successful expression of that urge to be gentlemanly. Barry often hesitates before uttering a word, as if he were thinking how best to formulate a sentence. His speech usually comes across as literary (though not sophisticated), and O’Neal has a way with that so-so Irish accent of his that makes the combination of his voice and his lines almost lulling, sometimes humorously so.
Barry is a restless man who hops around from the jobs of soldier to spy to gambler (gambling becomes a symbol of Barry’s life) over an undefined period of time. When Barry weds Lady Lyndon (by indirectly killing her half-dead husband), he has reached the highest high an opportunist can reach, and he can only go down from there. His manly desire to be respectable and rich and make something of himself has betrayed him, has tripped him up. He must face Lord Bullingdon, the son of Lady Lyndon’s deceased former husband, who is strangely precocious (seeing words of such sophistication come out of such a young boy looks like an animal talking in human words) and knows Barry does not love his mother. The couple have a child, Bryan, and Barry showers nothing but love on this boy. The love is pure and honest, but it can be seen as a tad self-absorbed too, because Bryan will carry on Barry’s legacy, and Bullingdon is only a threat.
Time goes by and hair grays. The film ends as it began, with another gun showdown over a woman. Bullingdon, who once was of flesh and warm blood and now has the pale face of a corpse, has become a dream monster, a product of an awful childhood and stunted growth, and the image of him morbidly sitting on the ground during a magic show for his brother’s birthday, holding his mother’s hand tightly like a twistedly devoted mama’s boy, is most alarming. The film’s famously suspenseful final showdown is a battle of gentlemanliness, and Barry, for once, leaves his life in the hands of another, and finally embodies what he has desired to be all his life. The film treats Bullingdon like scum, and he gets stupider and more irritating as the film progresses. He is seen as coarse and uncivilized, and Barry’s downfall is eventually instituted by what he has made Bullingdon- a sullen child-man who has nothing but contempt for him.
Barry Lyndon is a film where style is just as paramount as content. It is visually astounding, but in an aloof sort of way, and its look is similar to later period films like Amadeus and Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence. The world created here often looks artificial because the film is so stylistically modern and not at all like the conventional costume drama. Each frame is like a painting, and John Alcott photographs these cold, empty, and beautiful landscapes and ornate rooms with equal airiness and stuffiness. The production design of Ken Adam is gorgeous and flamboyant; even the small, simple Irish town in the first number of scenes is quite decorated. The costumes by Milena Canonaro and Ulla-Britt Soderlund are also elaborate and beautiful. The score has some really potent original music, and some works by Vivaldi, Bach, and Mozart. However, it is the makeup that truly deserves praise, and becomes one of the reasons why Alcott’s cinematography is so haunting. The looks on many characters’ faces are practically ghostly, and the makeup brings an outlandish, kabuki theatricality to the film. The older Bullingdon’s face is gaunt and chalky, as if all the life had been drained out of him.
There are hilariously gigantic wigs for Lady Lyndon, and they lend a lot to Marisa Berenson’s quiet role. Her performance is simply an expression of an aura; her character hardly ever speaks, and, while she communicates complete emotional bankruptcy well through her face and posture, her character’s being purposely underdeveloped makes her look as if she’s just moping about in this period piece. Berenson’s hair usually looks like a huge anvil over her head, with scary tendrils like weeds and moss. She looks most real when her hair is down, but her face is always made up, like many of this film’s supporting characters, to be white, dead-like, and exotically gothic.
2001: A Space Odyssey and Dr. Strangelove are usually cited as Stanley Kubrick’s best works. And I agree. Barry Lyndon is also worthy of that title. Kubrick, like his films, was an enigma. He refused to compromise, and his determination and artistic independence is evident in his work. It is why he succeeds (2001, Strangelove, Lyndon) and it is why he fails (Full Metal Jacket). Barry Lyndon is an oddity. It is peppered with wonderful humor, some sudden gags, and subtly moving moments. There are several long expanses of time without words, and they are the most emotional of all. The film is so boldly different; it never rains in this film and we hardly ever see nighttime, and the film’s sunniness clashes with all the inclement emotions. Scenes of sorrow are sometimes scored with cheerful, heroic music, or with no score at all.
This is a story partly about growing older, and about how, with increasing age, one is seen as more responsible for one’s actions. We forgive Barry’s naïveté at the beginning of the film because he is a young man with a life ahead of him, but we find it harder to forgive the crimes he commits as a knowledgeable adult. And the final gun fight between Bullingdon and Barry is not with tow, but with real bullets. Barry Lyndon ends with its title character yet again forced out of a town and moving on, and as he climbs into his carriage, the film freeze-frames the moment, and we are left with a picture of poignant inevitability, and a ruined character stuck in the warp of Kubrick’s deliberately plotted art.
By Andrew Chan
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