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| | I'm blown away every time I watch this film. For me I think it's my favorite Kubrick. |
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| | Strange set of circumstances; never heard of this film until a few weeks ago when I was looking for a recording of the British marching tune "Lilliburlero" and found the one from this film's soundtrack. Then last week the movie was shown on a British digital channel and now suddenly this article...Enjoyed it immensely. I read that Kubrick was apparently wanting to make a movie but about the Napoleonic Wars but then the epic "Waterloo" was released and he looked for something else, eventually finding the novel on which Barry Lyndon was based. |
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| | This is a film with a special ambience and texture. I was entranced when i saw it first, well, many years ago. Kubrick has definitely done more spectacular films, but this one is still my number one. A film that had a similar atmospheric impact on me, was Tarkovsky´s "Nostalghia".The review has opened up distant memories about that film...the light...the old music(!?)..people coming out of shadows...crossing vast spaces... |
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| | My father forced me to watch this movie when I was very young, but I only really appreciated it the second and third times around. A game can be made counting the number of candles lighting each successive setup... I once heard the painter Tony Scherman state that Kubrick was brilliant for deciding on O'Neal for the role because his acting career had something essentially 'Barry Lyndon' about it. |
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| | This article has some interesting points about Kubrick, but to me it doesn't make sense how the author is accusing Kubrick of "visual excess" over other directors visual simplicity. As I'm sure every one who went through a Kubrick phase knows, the Barry Lyndon camera had a lens from NASA which made the candle-light scenes one of a kind and will probably never be replicated. It's the use of this space age technology which creates this victorian atmospehere that makes Kubrick's approach so counter-intuitive. |
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| | re: visual excess over visual simplicity--
Even a 14 year old can recognize the blatant stylization ("visual excess") of Kubrick's films, and at the time I equated this "style" with artistic merit. I have nothing against visual excess, but it seems to me Kubrick's films often suffer because more attention is paid to lenses, set design, lighting, and camera motion than to character, emotion, and overall meaning. Barry Lyndon works because its visual excess contributes to our understanding of an idea about life and people. I don't necessarily prefer visual simplicity, but in time I've come to appreciate it as an aesthetic, where I once missed its merit. |
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| | Like you I had a full-on Kubrick-loving phase, but gradually came to love him less (though maybe I didn't fall out of love as hard as you - I still think there is plenty to admire in his work). Barry Lyndon was one of the last films I came to, and was my favourite for a while. That was years ago. Think I'll watch it again - thanks. |
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| | I think you should give credit to Dr. Strangelove for not having the following qualities: "Lack of humor, lack of emotion, lack of character, and worst of all, lack of humanity." |
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