Synopsis
“The first half of
Stanley Kubrick’s masterful adaptation of
William Makepeace Thackeray’s picaresque novel plays like a documentary of 18th-century manners, pairing the external world that the eponymous Irish rake (
Ryan O’Neal) is so anxious to conquer with interior shots that are truly revelatory; ever the innovator, Kubrick fit an 50mm still camera lens onto a motion picture camera, permitting him and Oscar-winning cinematographer
John Alcott to film even in the low light of England’s 18th-century domains. The resulting mood is crucial to the melodrama that envelops the film’s second half, as Lyndon’s physical gallantry turns into the growing confusion of an overreaching bloke who, in Kubrick’s words, “gets in over his head in situations he can’t understand.” Dismissed by many critics upon its initial release,
Barry Lyndon has been belatedly hailed as one of Kubrick’s greatest achievements by such admirers as
Martin Scorsese.” – Film Society of Lincoln Center
