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Barry
Lyndon
(1975)
If it were possible to accurately capture a time period on film,
Stanley Kubrick did it in Barry Lyndon. Not only did he capture
the costumes, hairstyles, and makeup of 18th Century Europe,
he incorporated so many elements of the arts of the period into
the film, that one could easily say that he made a film that
would have been made at that time, had the technology existed.
By using classical chamber music of Mozart and other contemporary
composers as the score, on authentic instruments (instead of
the heavily synthesized Beethoven present in A Clockwork
Orange), Kubrick captured the emotional feel of the era.
Also, every shot was set up in a very Baroque
style, lit and composed like a painting of the period. The frequent
use of Kubrick's trademark zoom, with slight and effective variation,
adds a scope to the film that few other have matched before
or since. A shot might start tight on a pair of dueling pistols
being loaded and slowly over the course of the scene pull out
to show a vast expanse of English countryside, with all the
action taking place in a single shot. It is commonly known that
this film utilized the largest aperture of any film (f 0.7)
in order to shoot using entirely natural lighting both for interiors
and exteriors. In the many candlelit scenes, not a single non-diagetic
light source was used. This artistic (and technical) choice
adds perhaps the most effective sense of realism to the film.
It should also be noted that, though the film
is slightly longer than three hours in running time, it never
feels as though it is dragging. Very often, period pieces suffer
from slow points sometimes lasting the entire film, yet somehow
Kubrick was able to pace Barry Lyndon in such a way
that it flows seamlessly from one period in his life to the
next, from one court to another, and details the eccentricities
of the era's culture without ever boring the viewer. Even the
battle scenes, which should in theory be less gripping due to
the civilized and slow nature of them, completely capture the
viewer, to the extent that a twenty minute segment of two men
taking turns shooting one another with a single shot pistol
on a dark barn seems like the most engrossing sequence ever.
While it is often overlooked among Kubrick's more
widely accepted "masterpieces" like A Clockwork
Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove
or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, The
Shining, and Full Metal Jacket, Barry Lyndon
should never be overlooked as Kubrick's most astonishing technical
achievement, if not one of his best films. It will always hold
a special place for me, even if I watch it very rarely.
-Mark Moreland
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All contents ©
2004-2009 Thoughtsonfilm.com |
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Director:
Stanley
Kubrick
Writer: William
Makepeace Thackeray, Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Ryan
O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Hardy Krüger, Steven
Berkoff, Gay Hamilton
Distributor: Warner
Bros. Pictures
Runtime: 184
min
Rating: PG
Release Date: December
18, 1975
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