It is
no secret that, by the second half of the 1960s, director
Stanley Kubrick took a deep interest in making a biography of
Napoleon Bonaparte, going to
inhumane levels of effort during pre-production to ensure he could perfectly recreate the atmosphere of 18th century Europe. Unfortunately, by that time, as the post World War II
baby boomers started reaching adulthood, a counterculture was created that centered around values like contemporary relevance and a revisionist attitude toward history, in a rebellion against the way the older generation saw the world. Correspondingly, general interest in period dramas, up to then extremely popular, had started to decline. As a result, Kubrick's producers, already apprehensive due to his gigantic budget estimations given the unfavorable cultural context, finally decided to abandon the project altogether once
Sergey Bondarchuk's thematically similar Waterloo (1970) turned out to be a major box office flop. Unable to obtain sufficient funding for his monumental epic, Kubrick ultimately decided to make the most of the material he had gathered so far, in adapting
W. M. Thackeray's
The Luck of Barry Lyndon into a film instead, since both narratives took place at around the same point in history, and an adaptation of Thackeray's novel would require a far smaller budget. Once
Barry Lyndon was
completed, it was clear that Kubrick had accomplished something singular; however, victim of the social bias of its time, it was for many years dismissed as an
overblown historical pageant... until recently, that is.
 |
Redmond Barry (Ryan O'Neal), on the left,
shooting Captain Quin (Leonard Rossiter) in a duel |
Young Redmond Barry (
Ryan O'Neal) first kissed the then love of his life, Nora (
Gay Hamilton), in a rainy summer afternoon. She, however, did not correspond to his affections, rather accepting the courting of wealthy Captain Quin (
Leonard Rossiter). Because of that, Barry challenges Quin to a duel and manages to shoot him, seeing himself forced to run away to avoid jail. Robbed of all his belongings on his way to Dublin, he finds solace in the military service, being then sent to the mainland to fight in the
Seven Years' War. With the death of his only friend, Captain Grogan (
Godfrey Quigley), Redmond decides to desert the military; he is shortly captured by England's Prussian allies, however, and thus compelled to fight for them in the war. Having saved the life of Captain Potzdorf (
Hardy Krüger), Redmond becomes his captive/protégé, working for him after the war has ended. Assigned to spy on Chevalier de Balibari (
Patrick Magee), an Irishman like himself, Redmond feels urged to reveal his secret to the Chevalier, who assists him in fleeing his captors. It is by working alongside the Chevalier, helping him cheat on cards, that Redmond sets eyes on the wealthy Lady Lyndon (
Marisa Berenson), and makes up his mind on marrying her in order to become a gentleman. Upon wedding her, he realizes that, by not being of noble birth, her entire fortune would pass on to her son from her previous marriage, Lord Bullingdon (
Leon Vitali), should anything happen to her. Bullingdon despises Barry, whom he considers an usurper, and that hate only intensifies as Redmond (now called Barry Lyndon) becomes less and less discreet on hiding his various love affairs. Enraged by Barry's vast expenditures of Lady Lyndon's fortune in hopes of acquiring a title of nobility, Bullingdon
tricks Barry into exploding of rage in front of the English aristocracy, thus forever
thwarting his chances at a lordship. After
the death of Barry's son with Lady Lyndon, Barry,
now with no title nor legacy, is plunged into a deep melancholy. He refuses to
kill Lord Bullingdon in a duel after having been challenged by him, is shot in the leg and has to have it amputated. With Bullingdon now acting as the executor to the Lyndon estate, Barry, loved by no other than his mother, is offered a yearly allowance to leave England. He goes then
to mainland Europe and resumes his profession as a gambler, never to be heard of again.
 |
| Lischen (Diana Körner) and Barry, disguised as an officer |
Narratively, the movie is divided in two parts, and, from the description above, it is not hard to guess where the first one ends and the second one begins. At first, before Redmond Barry becomes Barry Lyndon, he is presented to the viewer in a very positive light, reason why we can't help but cheer for him even though we are witnessing the degeneration of his character, as we see him turn from an idealistic teenager from countryside Ireland into a gambler and a cheater in the European high society. With the story flowing at a rather fast pace in Part One, we are introduced to several characters who, while seemingly important at first glance, soon take their leaves after having left their marks in Barry's life, while Barry himself behaves almost like an obliging child, as he emulates the many father figures he meets in his wanderings throughout Europe. His loveless marriage to Lady Lyndon, whom he uses to be welcomed into the English aristocracy, sets the tone for the second part of the movie, in which Barry, now a libertine, becomes the de facto villain of his own life story. Both parts are punctuated with comments provided by a sardonic narrator (
Michael Hordern), whose lack of faith in humanity produces amusing, yet biased, remarks that often conflict to what we are seeing onscreen. Take for instance the scenes depicting Barry's affair with Lischen (
Diana Körner), a peasant woman whose husband is fighting in the war (paid homage to in
Anthony Minghella's
Cold Mountain - 2003): while we see a lonely woman desperate for affection after having been left companionless for years, the narrator implies, instead, that she "comforts" herself in a regular basis with soldiers she brings home, despite no such indication having ever been presented. An analogous counterpoint is the scene in which Barry
duels with his stepson, Lord Bullington, with Barry's
declining to eliminate the sole obstacle between himself and the Lyndon fortune, despite having been branded several times as a heartless opportunist by the omniscient raconteur.
 |
| Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson) |
Perhaps as much as
Alfred Hitchcock, Kubrick tended to rely extensively on his actors' facial expressions in order to highlight the emotional state of his characters (see e.g.
A Clockwork Orange - 1971 - or
The Shining - 1980); nevertheless, this is not at all the case in
Barry Lyndon, since nearly its entire cast seem to have been instructed to play their parts with utter restraint, perhaps to better fit the artificiality of the 18th century society. Redmond Barry and Lady Lyndon in particular inhabit the world in a near-dreamlike state, behaving almost like placeholders, making
Ryan O'Neal and
Marisa Berenson ideal for those roles, given their limited range as performers.
O'Neal's Barry reacts quite apathetically to most of the events in his life, and sometimes that seems to be unintentional. Take for instance the scene in which the Chevalier (
Patrick Magee) is explaining to Barry how they can use Barry's position as a spy so that Barry can flee Prussia: "
You must tell [your Prussian supervisors]
I intend to demand satisfaction [from the Prince -- that is, to challenge him to a duel --. Barry's face remains expressionless, as it had been during the entire conversation, making the subsequent line unintentionally ludicrous]
. Don't look so downcast, my boy. [...] The worst they can do is send me out of this dreary country of theirs. If they should, don't worry... you shall not be left behind." Likewise,
Berenson, in a near silent role, plays Lady Lyndon as being even more blasée than Barry. Her absolute passivity is illustrated in their first scene together as husband and wife, in which Barry not only ignores her request to stop smoking in the cramped carriage they are in, but also poofs smoke at her face, which she submissively endures, as she will, for the years to come, withstand Barry's infidelity and indifference and, later on in her life,
her son's demands. With the exception of
Leonard Rossiter's delightfully slight overacting as Captain Quin, the remaining cast are almost as bland as the main couple, making every single aspect in the movie
other than the acting memorable. Being Kubrick famous for his meticulous direction, the lack of compelling performances is undoubtedly a deliberate act, for the point he seems to be making with his extensive use of zooms is that that all society, with its sense of self-importance and its petty rituals, is condemned to fade away in the mists of time, and that therefore all human affairs are insignificant, moronic even, by comparison... but more on this subject later on.
 |
| A sample of John Alcott's candlelit cinematography |
What Barry Lyndon is most remembered for is its production design, particularly John Alcott's masterful cinematography. In order to accurately recreate the mood of indoor environments during night scenes, Kubrick required Alcott to work with nothing but candles to light the sets, a feat so far unheard of in the history of motion pictures, for lenses fast enough to be able to photograph moving subjects under such extremely low light levels did not exist, nor did the digital technology necessary to simulate the desired effect. This problem was solved by modifying an ultra-fast lens (one NASA
was using for photographing the dark side of the moon in its Apollo missions) to fit Kubrick's movie cameras, a stunt that was
not easily accomplished. As an additional challenge, Kubrick had to cope with the fact that, as a result of using those lenses, he would have virtually no
depth of field in his shots, making focus-pulling a remarkably challenging task. Accordingly, there is very little movement in all candlelit scenes, with mainly the eyes of the actors in the foreground being in focus at all times; nevertheless, the resulting shots were astounding, earning Alcott a much deserved Oscar for his work. Take for instance the scene in which Captain Grogan (
Godfrey Quigley) tells Barry that his duel with Captain Quin had been a farce: by having the scene illuminated by only three candles, every time one of the characters produces an explosive sound (/q/, /p/ or /t/), the flickering of the flames changes the lighting of the entire scene, in a naturalness never before seen on film -- something we modern moviegoers, used to cutting edge special effects, will never be able to fully appreciate. Other than the gorgeous candlelit tableaus assembled by Kubrick and Alcott, I also quite enjoyed the scene in which Barry meets Lord Wendover (
André Morell) right after Barry's public display of rage at Lord Bullington: to symbolize his fall from grace in the English aristocracy, even though Barry is sitting very close to a window, he is not receiving as much light as Lord Wendover is, sitting at the other side of the hall.
 |
One of the many zooms in Barry Lyndon,
here stressing Lady Lyndon's loneliness |
Another distinguishing feature in
Barry Lyndon is the extensive use of zooms interspersing the narrative. In the first part of the movie, zoom-outs are often used to contrast the pretense at importance of man, an ephemeral being, to the everlastingness of the nature that surrounds him. To that effect, we are time and time again reminded of the human illusions of grandeur and perennity as we see earnest soldiers in parade, pure love being professed, lost love being mourned and a deadly duel being set up, all profoundly meaningful situations to those involved, but whose impact will ultimately be erased from the annals of history once they are all "equal", as professed in
Barry Lyndon's epilogue. Consequently, all those scenes begin with extreme close-ups of allegorical objects, and end in an extremely long shot in which all people in them are dwarfed by the magnificence of the landscapes they are in. Zoom-ins, on the other hand, are used in the first part mainly to depict Barry thinking to himself, as if absorbing and processing all information around him, as well as to highlight his focus of attention, illustrated for instance when he first sets his eyes on Lady Lyndon. Conversely, the sole image of Barry thinking during Part Two is characterized by a zoom out, soon after his public demonstration of rage that dooms his chances at obtaining a lordship, perhaps symbolizing his losing his grip on his future. Zoom-outs too have, in the latter part of the movie, the opposite meaning they had in part one: once used to stress the vastness of Barry's world, filled with opportunities, they now conclude mostly in medium shots, highlighting how confined Barry feels in the "gilded cage he put himself into" (as
expressed by Kubrick himself). A powerful narrative tool exclusive to the cinema, Kubrick would use zooms extensively once more in
The Shining (1980), also a Great Movie.
Out of all the beautifully candlelit scenes in he movie, this is the one I like the most:
Thanks for sharing this post with us.Wikivela
ReplyDelete