IMDb Top 250: #226 – Barry Lyndon (1975)

250 films, 250 reviews. This is a pretty crazy idea, but who doesn’t love a challenge? Here at Cultured Vultures we’ll be counting down the IMDb Top 250 with a review for each from one of our dedicated film writers. Everything from Goodfellas to Casablanca will be covered over the next year or so for you film lovers to enjoy. You can’t say we don’t spoil you, you lovely lot. – Ashley, Project Lead

The Wolf of Wall Street, for many people, was a prime example that it’s possible to weave a 3 hour narrative, populate it with almost universally dislikable people, make the starring character the worst of the bunch and still make it engaging from end to end. It’s very difficult, being that you have to find some narrative thread to keep the audience interested without the aid of any real pathos. If you want a real case study into this phenomenon, Stanley Kubrick is a pretty safe bet. A Clockwork Orange has you feeling sorry for a violent, inflated sexual deviant, Full Metal Jack plays out like someone dropped a scorpion into a box of fire ants and Eyes Wide Shut could have just as easily been titled Man, Fuck These People, Seriously. His masterpiece in this field though was undoubtedly 1975’s Barry Lyndon (based on William Thackeray’s The Luck of Barry Lyndon), a beautiful, sweeping, 187 minute 18th century period drama about an appalling asshole.

Thackeray is of course more well known for Vanity Fair, and in particular for the character of Becky Sharp, a ‘roguish’, manipulative sociopath who lies, cheats, marries, steals and possibly even murders her way almost to the highest reaches of social standing without so much as an ounce of guilt. It was compelling because it gloriously satirised the austerity of 19th century England and the way the vanity of the aristocracy could be so easily twisted. Speaking as a person who would have preferred Sense and Sensibility if it had ended in a killing spree, it appealed to me a lot. Vanity Fair is, of course, a classic, but 3 years earlier when Thackeray brought The Luck of Barry Lyndon out, nobody gave a shit. As such, when Kubrick announced he was making a film of it, starring Ryan O’Neal, who was most well known at the time for being that douchey grifter from Paper Moon, people were confused. When it came out more than a year later – yep, you guessed it – nobody gave a shit.

The film was a critical and commercial failure, widely regarded at the time as being a poor substitute for Kubrick’s planned-but-never-made Napoleon biopic. While it would have been amazing if that had ever been produced, Barry Lyndon has since been elevated to classic status, and interestingly enough Martin Scorsese (who, even taking WoWS out of the equation, has perhaps the most impressive ‘films full of dickheads’ quota of any film director in history) classes it as his favourite Kubrick film. The titular character is an Irish peasant (hence ‘Luck’, Thackeray’s views on the Irish is another article in and of itself) who has to flee his homeland after killing an English Captain in a duel, because they were both vying for the affections of Barry’s cousin, although it turns out the whole thing was staged to get rid of him.

He first ends up joining the English army, then the Prussian army, then becoming an undercover agent, then a con-man and finally deciding that he’s not rich enough and seducing the wealthy Countess of Lyndon, marrying her once her elderly husband pops his clogs. I said at the beginning of the article that Barry was an asshole, but like most assholes, it happens over time. His propensity for manipulation, similar to Becky Sharp, is there from the outset but initially he’s motivated by love (or at least thinks he is), but by the end he’s out for himself and nothing else, as evidenced by the way he treats his resentful, foppish stepson. The whole film is very cold and calculating, rarely settling into any state of emotional tenderness. It would be interesting to count the number of close-ups which appear in the film, it wouldn’t be a big number.

That’s not to say the cinematography isn’t amazing, all Kubrick’s films were beautiful, especially the ones which saw him working with John Alcott and while none of them can really stand up to 2001, Barry Lyndon comes the closest. Roger Ebert described it as ‘one of the most beautiful films ever made’ and it’s easy to see why. Some amazing locations across Ireland and England were used, including Cahir Castle, a hulking structure that’s stood on an island in the Suir river for almost 1000 years. You could pause the film almost at any point and it would look like a painting, exterior shots end up bearing resemblance to Turner’s romantics, while the interior scenes bear a striking similarity to Hogarth, which adds up, since Thackeray was a big fan. It’s also quite fun to bear in mind when watching this that Alcott also shot The Beastmaster.

There’s a certain directness to Barry Lyndon which also sets it apart from other Kubrick films. All the other adapted screenplays he worked on took the source material into more ambiguous, visually grounded territory but Barry Lyndon pretty much tells it as it is from start to finish. It’s almost entirely naturally lit (an incredible achievement), shots lasting over a minute are a frequent occurrence, the score is reserved and sparing and the narrative is arranged into acts with the appropriate amount of narrative exposition. Yet it’s still a Kubrick film, it maintains that feel of peering into some bizarre, far-gone facet of the human condition through perspex glass. The film has no likeable characters because it doesn’t need any, it’s the same satirical unpacking of the money-driven, hierarchy obsessed British upper-class that Thackeray intended it to be. I guess Kubrick had a bit more respect for the source material in this instance than he had when he made his next film, The Shining.

There is a redemptive moment as the film closes out, another duel which underlines the difference between Barry and the world he’s muscled his way into: no matter how conceited, Barry still has some sense of fair play and respect lurking beneath the surface, whereas, to them, he will always be sub-human. The distant, removed nature of the film’s presentation helps in this way, since any greater sense of emotional investment would have clouded the issue, it’s easy to forget that sometimes the worst thing you can do for a character is to make them relatable. Kubrick understood this better than most directors.

It’s still a long, difficult watch that you appreciate a lot more after you’re done with it than you do while you’re watching it (get from start to finish without checking how much of it is left at any point and I’ll give you a smiley sticker), but it’s still an essential one. In truth, I’m a little surprised that it’s this low on the Top 250; it’s climbed up to 219 since we started doing this, but shhhh, we don’t talk about that. I think period dramas set during this time are best when they do take more of a biting, satirical angle, it’s hard to think of a reason why anyone should really care about the trials and tribulations of rich people from 200 years ago, no matter how pretty their houses happened to be and Barry Lyndon remains probably the best example of that mindset.

Note: the IMDb Top 250 Cultured Vultures are using is based on the standings from the 16th of November. Inconsistencies may apply.