Barry Lyndon (PG)
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.First released in 1975, and now showing at the BFI, this is Kubrick's most beautiful movie, and his most touching.
Based on Thackeray's satirical novel, it recounts the adventures of a scapegrace Irishman, Redmond Barry (Ryan O'Neal), who flees his native land and falls into the Seven Years' War, soldiering first for the British, then for the Prussians. He becomes a police spy, then a roving gambler, then – his ultimate triumph – the husband of a passive English noblewoman, the Countess Lyndon (Marisa Berenson), who bears him a son. Kubrick indulges his love of tableaux, many of them rather glassy and fish-eyed, yet there is (surprisingly for him) a delicate strain of human feeling, such as the kiss Barry plants on his dying patron during battle, and a deathbed scene that would move a stone.
Marisa Berenson, pretty as a Gainsborough, and Leonard Rossiter, as Barry's early romantic rival, are among a fine supporting cast, which partly compensates for O'Neal's somewhat bland presence at its centre. Yet even that doesn't matter, because Kubrick's pictorial sense is consistently mesmerising and engaging, be it the pistol-duels, the smoky battlefields, the candlelit interiors, the Hogarthian debauchery, the set-piece brawl on a polished ballroom floor. You can't tear your eyes from it. Loosely held together by Michael Hordern's drolly ironic narration, it might not catch very much of Thackeray's tone but it creates a world that is sumptuously, even shockingly, vivid.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments