Saturday, November 23, 2024

Barry Lyndon (1975)

Recently, I clicked on video about the movie Barry Lyndon, something along the lines of why it is a great movie.  Of course, I have long viewed it as the worst movie Kubrick ever made, at least of the ones I've seen.  Yes, the cinematography is glorious, the lighting magnificent, the costumes outstanding, and the setting astonishingly well realized.  However, Barry Lyndon is a terrible human being.  If he had been shot dead by the highway robbers at the beginning of his story, the world would have been a better place.  The only time I even mildly respected Lyndon was when he fired his shot at the ground rather than blowing the head off his insufferable stepson.

In many ways, the movie reminds me of Martin Scorsese films.  The hero is actually a villain but is glorified on film.  There is no empathizing with these sociopaths.  I want a hero's journey, not a villain's journey.  It's not even a morality tale, warning the viewer away from such behavior.

Because I clicked on that video, I have been fed more and more Barry Lyndon-related videos, all of them painting it as a wonderful film, maybe Kubrick's best.  Ugh.  He had wanted to do a period piece and had been working on a Napoleon film.  However, Waterloo (1970) was released as a box office loser, nixing funding for more Napoleon films in the near future.  He shelved Napoleon and switched to Barry Lyndon.  Oh, the tragedy!

Only the devoted Kubrick fan - who wants to see all his films - should waste time on this travesty.  Thumbs way down.

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