Barry Lyndon

It's a beautiful film. Certainly among my favourite Kubrick films. So many scenes look like paintings.

It's the most excruciatingly boring POS of all the artsy fartsy nouveau cinema movement, and that include BLOW-UP and DEATH IN VENICE. Quite a feat. Watching sliced avocado turn brown is more interesting, and Ryan O'Neil's performance in it makes his turn in Peyton Place seem like Laurence Olivier's second coming.

Oh , and like R1 said, most of the scenes are as equally compellng as paint drying on a wall

I never said anything of the sort, R3.

Beautiful film. I prefer it to Clockwork Orange. I maintain now and always that this is one of the great tragi-comedies, a slow burn of greed, cowardice and arrogance that depicts an aristocratic structure that creates arbitrary divisions among European nations united in the absurdity of their power hierarchies. The film suggests that the entire aristocracy of Europe is maintained by interbred families and brazen confidence tricks perpetuated by both pretenders and genuine members of the ruling class. The fact that it’s so beautifully shot with an impeccable score is a mere bonus!

Stream it free on the Movieland TV app!

Ryan O'Neal?!?!?! Fer sur, Stanley, you great genius auteur. The candlelit scenes are so BEE-YOO-TI- FULL.

and it's homophobic...

R1 weren't you dying ?

If you can kick back and watch how beautiful it is, then do. If you can't sit still, don't even think about it. It helps to be stoned.

And the music! Piano Trio in E Flat, Franz Schubert:

You have got horrible taste, r2.

R2 likes GOOD movies like Boss Baby and BAPS.

(And wtf is "the nouveau cinema movement" supposed to be?)

Ryan O Neal is such a strange choice for the lead. Although he was riding that Love Story-What’s Up Doc-Paper Moon train at the time. Who would’ve been better cast?

It's a wonderful movie, a great story, beautifully photographed, awesome score (Schubert fits perfectly though off by a century). Everyone is perfectly cast, including the arrogant bastard and social climber Ryan O'Neill.

^Ryan O'Neal

One of my favorites. I love it. Each frame a work of art, a painting. And Ryan is delectable.

Barry Lyndon is one of my favorite films.

The casting of Ryan O'Neal bothered me for a number 9f viewings and was a distraction. In time, though, I came not to mind it, as Lyndon was a rather stupid sort buffeted along in life by stronger forces than his weak self, occasionally and rather randomly seizing on some presumed opportunity. But the 18thC was the realm of the clever, and Lyndon never knowingly managed a run of clever except by occasional chance. Barry Lyndon is an 18thC protype of Prince Harry, advanced in life by stronger women and growing eventually quite bitter for it.

I'm any case, Kubrick's arrogance in casting big name actors as empty vessels that he would work around and overcome arguably works in this case (if not in, say, Eyes Wide Shut.)

It owes so much to Thackeray: so much dialogue, humor, pacing, tone, changes of scene, the hapless hero who is ruined internally and then in his fortune. Thackeray is brilliant and Kubrick clearly loved his material. So many memorable characters, the wheezing centenarian gasbag Lord Lyndon (sniffing out Barry's game immediately), the Rev. Runt, the Chevalier, Barry's horrible mother, Lady Lyndon, the highwsymen, the Captain Potzdorf (and so many military men)... They are fantastic and memorable from Kubrick's fleshing out. It's an epic story and needs the time and vast array of characters and places to bang home it's point. It's a neat perfect film. And perfectly beautiful, capturing the chill of a sparely furnished Georgian room and just about down to the smell of the candles being.

Love the film, maybe the most beautiful I've seen, along with Visconti's 'The Leopard.' As I recall, Kubrick devised new lenses to achieve the lighting effects and pictorial depth he wanted. Genius.

Ryan O'Neal was in fact a perfect choice for the over-confident adventurer - not over-bright, but sure his good looks, vigour and will would take him where he wanted to go. His industry hotness would certainly have appealed to Kubrick, but RO was well-cast apart from that.

Is this the one movie Marissa Barenson made?

R15 Ryan O’Neal thought he was going to win the Oscar for this. He thought this would establish him as one of the great film actors of his generation. Actually he wasn’t bad, but Ryan was basically playing himself. Mr. Barry-Lyndon was self important. His greatness was a product of his imagination. Sound familiar?

There are few scenes in film history that are more emotionally and physically brutal that the "Don't you think he fits my shoes" with Lord Bullington and his little brother. And I cried when the little brother died. Ryan O'Neal's grieve was truly believable and very well acted.

Thanks for making a thread about this movie, OP. I think its a great film. My Son, bought me the first edition print of this book, because we both like it so much. I hope more people see it.

I liked it. I remember thinking it a male Vanity Fair and then saw that they shared the same author.

R21 didn’t you see Cabaret?

Yes, R23, the little boy's funeral scene is so unforgettably heart-wrenching that I'm choking up right now just thinking about it.

I’d love to do a double feature of The Leopard and Barry Lyndon two of the most beautiful films ever.

The most authentic period-correct movie ever made. An unrivalled masterpiece.

The scenes from the Lyndon phase onward unfold like a horrifying Hogarth series. Just the amount of discomfort felt by all involved when Barry Lyndon is shunned, his invitations declined, and he becomes a well dressed nobody -- and the more personal losses felt on a visceral level.

Spielberg said Barry Lyndon was 'like a long afternoon at The Prado without lunch.' Obviously not enough spaceships for his liking.

Is that the one Pauline Kael called a "coffee-table book movie" ? It's a good description. Lovely but static.

[quote] It's slow moving like many Kubrick movies, but I wasn't bored at all.

Totally agree. I had the same response to Werner Herzog's Kaspar Hauser film.

Similar period and the first film by Ridley Scott: The Duelists. Lush, slow, slightly incomprehensible, riveting.

In a similar slow but engrossing vein: Elephant by Gus Van Sant.

The entire film follows one kid around the school, usually ten feet behind him-- with a few detours, the film explains nothing- -just lets you watch and witness the Columbine school shooting without hype or sentiment.

It’s my favorite Kubrick film. I agree that it is long - but I have never been bored watching. The battle scenes are excellent. I think O’Neal was perfectly cast. His very life is a mirror of Barry Lyndon. The Luck of Barry Lyndon .That he mourns his child but was a horrible father…. Meanwhile candlelight filming is so real and brilliant. I agree with R19- Thackeray is to blame for such a great, witty and insightful story. I have met many Barry Lyndons in my life. I also love the moment when he kisses his dying friend- so much more in that kiss than we could know. I also think that the music always feels like a walk to the block- and therefore Lyndon always seems to be walking to his ruin. Ryan O’Neal thinking he would get an Oscar- such a Barry Lyndon moment!

Saw it when it came out, a feast for the eyes.

[quote] Similar period and the first film by Ridley Scott: The Duelists. Lush, slow, slightly incomprehensible, riveting.

I actually prefer The Duellists. It’s even more beautiful and less pretentious. Ridley Scott’s first film, and IMO, it’s been downhill for him ever since. And for naysayers, the casting of “cool” California Caradine vs. “hot” New York Keitel is perfect.

I love Lord Wendover. He encapsulates so much.

[quote]When I take up a person, Mr. Lyndon, he or she is safe. There is no question about them any more. My friends are the best people. I don’t mean that they’re the most virtuous, or indeed the least virtuous, or the cleverest or the stupidest or the richest or the best born. But the best. In a word, people about whom there is no question.

Apparently Kubrick transferred these lines to *Barry Lyndon* from *Vanity Fair*: an inspired move.

The Scene in the Club where Lord Wendover shuns Barry is brilliant

I love the scene with Wendover where his friends are selling an overpriced picture to Barry - and he knows it.

Lots of Tasteful Friends in the movie.

Milena Cananero's costumes designs hooked me and then I stuck around for the slow, engrossing story and beauty of the set designs and cinematography.

It's a perfect film for a long rainy afternoon or stuck inside because of a blizzard.

I should lay copies of The Newcombes and Vanity Fair. It's been many years since I read them. Those two titles and Barry Lyndon are books so deeply out of fashion at the moment that no doubt they are much less read than two or three decades ago. I always recommend Thackeray to young people I like, saying that all the world is in his writing, everything you need to know about making your way in the world is there. And every page funny.

Thank you all for explaining why Ryan O Neal actually was good casting.

(I just find Thackeray very depressing)

I already want to rewatch it to see what I missed. I have some hearing loss and I was reading the captioning throughout and I think I missed some of the imagery. One thing I love about Melancholia is that the dialogue is spare and it kind of forces you to observe the visuals.

I think I have rewatched Eyes Wide Shut and 2001 more than any other movie except...Clueless.

The venerable British actor Michael Hordern's calm narration of the dramatic events in this movie enhances it so much. It has a resigned, philosophical, "such is the nature of human behavior" tone to it ... especially when he says "They are all equal now" - i.e., dead.

The costuming in this film, by Milena Canonero, for all classes of 18th c. European civilian and military life, is astonishingly accurate. The best ever.

OP, I am so glad you started this thread. Barry Lyndon is my most favorite movie of my whole old life.

R49 Why is it your favorite among all movies?

Well, R50, the superb beauty and historical accuracy of it, plus the unforgettable way in which the excellently-selected music reflected and enriched the emotions and events in it. The perfect casting of every single person in it. The costuming, the interiors, the exteriors, the moods, the lighting! The typical human desires and their karmic consequences ... the ups and downs of our emotional existences, timeless and relatable to this day.

I also like the philosophical attitude with which Barry and his mother bear their downfall. Again very well acted.

The scene where Barry’s mother fires the Reverend is brilliant. Such nastiness and anger with such well crafted sentences.

Schuberts Piano Trio in E-Flat is one of the most haunting and beautiful pieces of music ever written. Perfectly used in the movie. The choice of music, including the sentimental Irish song, is one of the greatest achievements of this movie. Did Kubrick do this himself?

[quote]In time, though, I came not to mind it, as Lyndon was a rather stupid sort buffeted along in life by stronger forces than his weak self, occasionally and rather randomly seizing on some presumed opportunity.

That is precisely why so many Kubrick films seem so long to some people. At some point in his career, he seemed to lose interest in active protagonists. So many of his films are about characters "buffeted along" by circumstances beyond their control, rather than the classic leading character who drives the narrative. HAL drives 2001, the Overlook drives The Shining, no one really drives Full Metal Jacket. Alex is only the engine in the first part of Clockwork Orange. It makes those films fascinatingly remote.

What does make O’Neal’s acting great is that behind all the toxic masculinity and buffoonery you can see the humanity.

What stood out to me on my first watch was that violence all seemed rather pointless. Barry was Irish and enlisted in a was as an English soldier, and he was willing to kill but he was always ambivalent.

He did the duel thing, as his father had done, and he believed he killed someone and that didn't really seem to faze him. He remained focused on his desires—his cousin and his social standing.

He got in a fight with someone who insulted him and he was made into a mini-hero for that by the other soldiers. He didn't have the wit to 'fight back' verbally and so he fought like an buck, locking horns.

He wasn't fighting for anything at all except, the narrator told us, to be part of high society. But high society involves verbal sparring and he's not equipped for that and always will resort to lowly violence.

Then he was made to fight for the Germans, and he did that, too, worried only about how he'd get out and get on with his life. So he fought wars for two countries he didn't care about or belong to.

Then he married and got what he wished for, but an obstinate high-born little boy offended him...so he got violent. Later on, the older boy did it again (justifiably) and he got violent again, this time in public. He had believed until then that he had passed for a refined and dignified gentleman and be gave up the charade in front of an audience who could no longer pretend he wasn't some dumb animal.

I guess I saw his character growth arc as being when he chose not to shoot his adoptive son and take the consequences, and to return to his lot in life.

So I guess in the end my read of the narrative is that violence isn't useful or noble, whether war or fraternal or domestic, but instead it is a means of expression for people who don't relate to one another and have no language to express themselves verbally.

And perhaps an undegirding demonstration of class divides, as Barry's whole lifelong goal was to be wealthy and significant and even when he scammed his way into it and felt like he was successful, he always knew he was an imposter and, we learn, so did everyone around him, including the little boy he helped to raise.

I was only a little bothered by Lady Barry's depiction. It was interesting that she was comically melancholy. I don't know if I have ever seen that before. But I can't reason at all what drove her decision making process. She definitely didn't seem like a 3-D character to me like the others did. Even the German woman Barry had a tryst with had an understandable motivation. But Lady Barry got the hots for the new Irish guy and chose him over her decrepit old husband (OK, I can follow that), but she totally abandoned her little boy emotionally and continued to fawn over her asshole husband until the end, when the son she abandoned came back to her. Her performance seemed to me like a depressive person, which typically would be a deep-thinking person, but her behaviors came across like those of an intellectually disabled person and I don't get that.

And further to R55's insight is the Cruise character in 'Eyes Wide Shut.' Following his wife's stoned assertion of thwarted infidelity, he embarks upon a long night of being buffeted around the dark forces of sex and death.

I suppose one theme Kubrick is exploring in all these films is the haphazardness of fate, the illusion of free will, given all that life can and will impose. An irony perhaps, considering Kubrick's notorious and meticulous control-freakery. Which gave us films to marvel at.

R58 Another theme that seems to accompany all the 'buffeted' men is fragile and futile masculinity in society. Jack in the Shining is an arrogant-yet-fragile domineering family breadwinner, Bill in Eyes Wide Shut is an arrogant-yet-insecure family breadwinner with a trophy wife who has no idea he is way in over his head among richer people with occult secrets, Barry is an arrogant-yet-fragile-and-insecure bro who makes all his progress in life through brute force or seduction, Dave is a stoic final evolution of man who loses to a computer and ends up an animal in a zoo in total isolation before advancing to a disembodied higher state. Taken altogether, it seems to me like Kubrick saw potential of men to be something greater than they are, but that potential is in the mind and always undermined by social forces in the company of other people. Dave, Bill, and Barry all seem pretty OK on their own. It's their interactions with others, their power grabs, that do them in. But in all cases they do have their requisite lessons and character arc realizations. I'm not sure about Jack.

It needed a Ryan O'Neal in his prime full frontal, even if it was candle light.

I did wonder if he was wearing something like a codpiece. He filled out his trousers quite fully.

Sometimes I think it's great, other times I think it's a pseudo-profound. I need to re-watch it. But I definitely remember watching it on VHS as a teen and jerking off to Ryan O'Neal cause he was just so beautiful in it.

I remember thinking that Malick’s “The New World” was sort of a similar slow burn. Sort of the same; long film full of mundane scenes that somehow break your heart and tell a giant story anyway.

R62 The ironic tone of the narrator totally compensates for any questions I might have had about whether the movie is 'pseudo profound' or pretentious. Ultimately, it feels borderline satirical to me, to be a somewhat serious emotionally removed demonstration of classism and violence and human limitations, but at the same time to present human beings like any other animal in a documentary narrated by David Attenborough. The narrator feels like Attenborough, simultaneously appreciating the story being told and finding a removed humor in the distant observations of peculiar habits.

Come to think of it...the narrator's tone is sort of how I'd imagine the tone of the beings who abducted Dave in 2001 to be as they watched him milling about in his human zoo. Curious and attuned to his behaviors, but also finding them simpleminded and ultimately pointless.

R21 turn in your gay card.

The original novel is comical in tone, much more so than the movie.

One of its genres is witty comedy of manners in a very old English but mostly French style. For comparison purposes see the satire and social commentary "drame gai" of Renoir's "La règle du jeu".

I thought the movie was comical in a meditative way rather than a jokey way. That's probably what makes people think it's pretentious. Most successful satires we get are very in-your-face dark comedies and they make it obvious that we are meant to laugh at characters, like Network. This presents itself like a drama while in fact being a dark comedy about human nature, society and classism. The narrator and the audience are in on the joke as the characters take themselves seriously. That makes us think about how seriously we take our own lives, how silly class rules really are, how ultimately unimportant all our grand life struggles are, and therein lies the tragic comedy. Little ants warring over a leftover crumb, and one of them wins and feels triumphant, and ultimately the person who dropped the crumb probably doesn't notice, or they may notice and may be mildly amused and then step on both the ants, anyway.

I'm not renewing my annual DL subscription when it expires.

If ever there is a thread, however, that would make me change my mind, it's this one. Damn, some of you are so much fun, and informing, to read.

Too bad the rest of the DL has gone to shit.

As a young gayling of 13 who identified with Lord Bullington, I almost threw up myself at the final duel scene. I was so nervous and emotionally invested.

R69 We keep trying and hoping against hope. I feel like I have seen a lot less of the types of Russian trolls and hateful people I can't stand here over the past month or so than in years, but a midterm election in the US is approaching and it past is prologue, this place is about to go to hell again. I cannot understand how a gay men's message board site became a hub of Nazis and anti-democratic racists, but it did. My ignore button has either finally been working in recent weeks or perhaps Muriel is coming to our rescue finally. I find it more tolerable and at times even pleasant here very recently. The terminally ill "Joe" thread and the thread with the person who has a brain tumor are very moving to me. I don't want to see this website go under but I too will have to abandon it if it continues to devolve into a hub of hatred first and foremost. The racism, the anti-Semitism, the anti-transgender and misogynist hatred that is too often dismissed as 'humor' is way over the line of tolerability, and the fact that this site has been given over to or taken over by GOP propagandists who write in broken English before every US election is downright scary.

I think the film is quite funny, though the book more do.

With the right narrator, any of Thackeray's book would be brilliant as audiobooks. (Not a huge fan of audiobooks, just recognize how good a thing can be when well done. )

[quote]Ryan O'Neal was in fact a perfect choice for the over-confident adventurer - not over-bright, but sure his good looks, vigour and will would take him where he wanted to go.

I agree. I loved the film in 1975 when it came out. Ryan was perfect, if a bit too old, but isn't everyone? Trouble for him is that the lengthy shooting blew a hole in his film career and it was never the same.

Not my favorite Kubrick (I would have 2001, Strangelove, Shining, Paths, and Clockwork above it, at least, and maybe The Killing too...probably in that order), but I do love it. And I'm another who finds it delightfully droll, besides beautiful to behold.

[quote]And the music! Piano Trio in E Flat, Franz Schubert:

More recently, Paul Thomas Anderson used an earlier movement of the same work for the big fashion show in Phantom Thread.

Thanks for the spoiler alert, R23.

Fucking dick.

R75 One assumes when speaking among elder gays, about a 50 year old movie that is considered essential viewing for cinephiles, there is no such thing as a spoiler. Of course if you are young and haven't seen this, I see your point. I'm not R23.

Exactly R76. And not to mention a well known novel published almost 180 years ago and likely continuously in print since.

If the book or the film is good (and both are very good in this case), then it can't be 'spoiled'.'

Yeah, I don't feel like plot spoilers apply to this movie. There's no real dramatic tension.

In fact, R75, you are bound to end up yelling at the movie itself about spoilers. Most important scenes are preceded by the narrator telling us what is about to happen. (SPOILER ALERT FOR YOUR BENEFIT EVEN THOUGH THE MOVIE SPOILS IT BEFORE IT HAPPENS) Even when Barry's young son dies, which is a very moving 10 minutes or so, the narrator tells us point blank that Barry's son is about to die.

If you don't like "spoiler alerts", R27, don't read threads where movies are analyzed. Especially movies that are 47 years old. And thanks for injecting nastiness into this nice thread.

I was looking for something else but found instead this excellent 15 minute video by a Met Museum curator Adam Eaker on Kubrick's art historical references.

There is a difference between making entertainment and creating a visual world that lives and breathes.

R45 Read Vanity Fair, he’s hilarious.

R80, thank you very much for sharing that wonderfully insightful video. It helps explain why so many of us love this film so much.

So I just stumbled upon this film, it's currently on HBO/HBO Max. What an outstanding film!!! Uh, you can just tell it was made when studios and films were given real sky high budgets. What I also like about this is beyond Ryan's 70s hair int he beginning, they don't try to modernize anyone.

Though the idea of accounting in this period truly baffles me. If Berry was able to spend them into ruin, how the heck can the son afford to give him 500 a year? Also, why wasn't the sone, who should be a duke (if I'm not mistaken) able to take over the accounts once he's of age? WOuldn't his father's money have gone to him and any money his mother had in her own right would have gone to her husband leading to the son upon the father's death?

It just seemed odd that the son was powerless and his mother seemed to hold all the financial cards.

I loved how the king told Berry to get on a boat and join his paid militia. I did notice he got his Lordship so I guess it paid off but I don't see how they helped him or his son. Being a Lord doesn't mean you get an allowance so what was his mother scheming about?

Anyone see it on the big screen?

I did, r85, at one of the big theatres across Third Avenue from Bloomingdale's. There would not have been any other way to see it in 1975, so I didn't think much of it. Loved the movie. Loved going to the Baronet/Coronet or Cinema 1 & 2 those days and sitting in the smoking section. I saw so many movies in one or the other of those theatres.

Well I must say Ryan O'Neal was so cute, from the waste up. His chicken legs and Tommy Pickles stance made me laugh so much. You could just see women and gay men falling for him. Despite his character being a huge grifter, I was still lusting after him.

This film made my week. Possibly the best film I've seen all year!

What was with the Captain and his desire to kiss Barry, including that long last kiss? Were they fucking or something?

[quote]Her performance seemed to me like a depressive person, which typically would be a deep-thinking person, but her behaviors came across like those of an intellectually disabled person and I don't get that.

Kubrick frequently portrays the people in his films as all being a bit dim, it's just a matter of degrees. He likes it when an actor's charisma and charm hides the stupidity of the character, a little in O'Neal's case, or a lot in Jack Nicholson's case in "The Shining." It works best when Kubrick doesn't judge the character for being a little dumb, such as with Shelley Duvall in "The Shining." Audiences are cruel to her but Kubrick isn't; she's the goddamned hero, winning against a supernatural evil.

My problem with Lady Barry is that she is judged for being depressive and dumb. The film looks down on her, which I get as far as the humorous/satirical quality of the film goes, but it seems like a dirty trick in her case; everyone else is dumb and awful, too, so why does she get the brunt of it, and not people who are even worse than her?

Weak link: Ryan.

Is it on TCM today?

It's a feast for the eyes.

[Quote] and that include BLOW-UP and DEATH IN VENICE

It do?

R93 = Oscar Gamble

Absolutely among my very favorite films. I see that I waxed on about way up thread, in 2022, so I'll say no more, but I find it perfect.

[quote] but I find it perfect

Yay!