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Barry Lyndon received mixed reviews on its release, widely
described as the beautiful but cold product of a director obsessed with
technique. However the counterpoint between its meditative pace, sharply ironic
tone and the exploration of Kubrick's familiar themes places it at the centre of
the director's achievements.
Thackeray's "Alas! We are the sport of destiny" could be the epigraph for
many of Kubrick's films, and fate drives the narrative as Barry, despite his
ambition, is buffeted from event to event. The two-part structure charts a rise and fall similar to Kubrick's
own Lolita (1962), A Clockwork Orange (1971), and Eyes Wide Shut (1999).
However, the characters have different levels of dynamism: Tom Cruise's
semi-catatonic performance in Kubrick's last film attracted the same sort of
criticism that met Ryan O'Neal's Barry and model-turned-actress Maria Berensen's
Lady Lyndon, though they are immensely effective on their own terms, while
Michael Hordern's knowing narration is a witty and ironic foil to the
characters' helplessness.
The exquisite, Gainsborough-inspired imagery is not simply a beautiful gown
for the film but, with its intense colours and perfectly balanced compositions,
reflects the rigidly stratified society of the time. Much was made of the NASA
lenses used to capture scenes lit only by candles, but this now seems less an
affectation than a way of intensifying the atmosphere. The camera's frequent
slow dollies backwards, from a small detail to the wider scene, echo the plot's
revelations and the inexorability of fate.
For all its length, Lyndon is tightly structured, heavily reliant on
symmetries and doublings, a maze of mirrors with events reflecting back and
forth against each other, constantly making us reassess our feelings about
characters and events. Card games and duels recur throughout, underlining the
role of chance.
One of the film's four Oscars was for the score, though it comprises lengthy
cues of pre-existing music to which, as was his habit, Kubrick edits the images.
It links events and ideas, tracing Barry's progress from peasantry, through the
army and into gentility. Nora and the German girl are backed by the folk song,
'The Women of Ireland', while the Countess Lyndon brings Schubert's wistful
Piano Trio. But the last word goes to Handel's obsessive 'Sarabande', the title
and end music and accompaniment to the two major duels, reminding us of
implacable fate and man's insignificance before it.
John Riley
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1. First love: Nora (3:00)
