Director: Stanley Kubrick
There's a popular Internet podcast entitled How Did This Get Made? that discusses legendarily awful films. While Barry Lyndon is not an awful film by any stretch, the same question applies quite well to it. How did Stanley Kubrick convince anyone to let him make this movie the way he made it? It's 3 hours long, it's a period drama, Ryan O'Neal is not really a leading man, and it's also directed by Stanley Kubrick. The costumes and settings are all first-rate. Kubrick no doubt did a million takes of everything, as he tends to do. I'd like to thank whatever studio took a gigantic bath on this film for wasting their money.
Barry Lyndon is an amazing technical achievement - the synthesis of image, dialogue, and music is incredible, perhaps unmatched in any movie I've seen. The film is filled with picturesque shots - Kubrick will often pull back to reveal an even more picturesque backdrop. However, this is my second time through the film, and while I certainly enjoyed it, I was far less moved. Story is this film's greatest downfall - I don't really know what to take away from Barry Lyndon.
I took away a strong desire to buy the soundtrack, which I did, and then I lost it. Some of the sequences in this film are absolutely amazing. My favorite was when Barry and the Countess first get together during the card game.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this is cool (from Wiki):
ReplyDelete'Kubrick was "determined not to reproduce the set-bound, artificially lit look of other costume dramas from that time."[1] After "tinker[ing] with different combinations of lenses and film stock," the production got hold of three "super-fast 50mm" f/0.7 lenses "developed by Zeiss for use by NASA in the Apollo moon landings," which Kubrick had discovered in his search for low-light solutions.[1][3] These super-fast lenses "[w]ith their huge aperture [the film actually features the largest lens aperture in film history] and fixed focal length" were problematic to mount,[1] but allowed Kubrick and Alcott to shoot scenes lit with actual candles to an average lighting volume of only three candlepower, "recreating the huddle and glow of a pre-electrical age."'