Barry Lyndon (1975)

Art direction by Ken Adam and Roy Walker

Music by Leonard Rosenman

*SPOILER FREE

In the first article of this series, I said 'Dr. Stranglove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb' was my favorite film by my favorite filmmaker. I lied.

It was in the reign of Stanley Kubrick that the aforesaid cinema was written and directed; "good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor they are all equal now."

Barry Lyndon is a satirical period drama set in the 18th-century and follows the life of Redmond Barry, an Irish well-born who fancies himself a gentleman, and his quest to become a member of the English aristocracy.

This is a chronicle of one man's triumphs and misfortunes, aspiration and regrets, and rise and fall on social ladder. This is a ballad about the pursuit of personal happiness, social relevance, and sexual deliverance. This is a motion poem of the human nature in its most innocence and its darkest opportunism.

Stanley Kubrick, the pioneer of American cinema, unfolds his finest masterpiece, a Kubrick paradise in every shot, a cinematic painting in every frame. He majestically adapts the 1844 novel into a hauntingly gorgeous and exquisitely entertaining motion picture.

Shot, almost entirely, using natural light during the day and candle light at night through special ultra-fast lenses designed by NASA to shoot on low light and framed to evoke real 18th-century paintings, especially those of Thomas Gainsborough's. This is the most beautiful film ever shot.

From Handel's Sarabande to Schubert's Piano Trio, Kubrick had a number of timeless classical music rearranged and used in this historical drama. Few films in 20th century sounded better than this marvelous work of sight and sound.

In the century that gave us and the world of visual art the likes of Pablo Picasso and Frida Kahlo, and those who dived deep in the human animalistic condition and soul, Neizche, Freud, and Russell, and their works that would change the world of art and philosophy forever, no single body of work depicts the best of both worlds better than Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, substantially philosophical and extraordinarily artistic.

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Available to watch on HBO Max, Apple TV, The Criterion Collection, and on Amazon Prime Video

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