Never Seen It #212: Barry Lyndon

In my profession, we hear many such stories. Yours about watching 400 movies you've never seen before is one of the most intriguing and touching I've heard in many weeks. Nevertheless, I'm afraid I cannot grant your request. But I'll tell you what I will do. I'll allow you to keep those fine blog, which in normal circumstances I would have for myself. The next town is only five miles away, and I suggest you now start walking.

Barry Lyndon

1975

Stanley Kubrick

Thanks to Group B for pulling a good conversation together this week with their individual write-ups. See our thoughts about Barry Lyndon below. And then meet us in the comment section for more discussion! 

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Brittany

I didn't know what I should have been expecting with Barry Lyndon. When googling the movie, it had great reviews. I think I was expecting something along the lines of The Patriot, or something like that. This movie was pretty good. I did not mind how long it was. The first act: aw, poor guy, I feel for him, I'm really rooting for him to come up on top. The second act: this son of a bitch... I hope he ends up with nothing. Something I didn't quite catch on to while watching the film was the visual cinematic mastery. There were some scenes I recall being very neat, visually. However, the first time watching any movie, I am mostly paying attention to the story and less so the art behind filming, so I'd definitely watch it again and pay more attention to the scenery, the costumes, and the music.

GRADE: 3.5/5

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Sam

With several Kubrick films in my back pocket, I anticipated this unseen would-be classic. Unfortunately, despite the grand ambitions, this movie felt a bit of a dud. It lacks Kubrick's acerbic wit, or, really, a meaningful point conveyed with precision. Instead, we are left with a meandering portrait of an interesting rouge and a theme along the lines of "the rich get theirs in the end." Kind of a weak from a filmmaker who usually offers such clarity of vision.

I spent a lot of the film waiting for the other shoe to drop. And what I received, instead, was a bloated period melodrama about a protagonist who was more interesting on the paper (as the narrator filled in some details) than what was depicted on the screen.

Though I enjoyed Ryan O'Neal's performance, and accent, and general hunk (pre-Brad Pitt) demeanor, the avatar of Redmond Barry Lyndon left much to be desired. At first, Barry possesses naïveté, passion, and stupidity; later, he's a bit of a nihilist; and, for the painful bulk of the movie, a pampered dandy out of his element.

Kubrick offers a slow burn. There's a subtle but ever-present critique of the haves taking advantage of the have nots. The rules shift and Barry is never quite able to keep ahead of them. Though explicit in the narration, it's less satisfying than the direct and obvious moral quandary of Paths of Glory (sending men to death on a doomed mission for minor strategic benefit) or the incessant cuckolding in Eyes Wide Shut. I could hang with the length, but I didn't feel Kubrick justified the run time, as he didn't have much to say.

Other stray points:

• Recently, I viewed Paper Moon, O'Neal's two-hander co-starring his daughter, Tatum, which was glorious. Slightly weird tie-in here, as Tatum won an Oscar, and Ryan was bitter. Maybe a bit like his relationship with Lord Bullingdon.
• Great character actors throughout—love the mom, the Chevalier, and Captain Grogan.
• Interesting to see Ireland just part of the British empire, and not a conflict of Irish independence.
• Weird gay subtext unremarked on a few times.
• The Lyndons are great sniveling cucks—both the feeble Sir Charles and his puking son Lord Bullingdon could play a dean or yacht club bro in an '80s movie.
• Poor little Brian was destined to die as soon as he came on screen.

Grade: 3 out of 5

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Joe

What are we to make of these three hours? In which Stanley Kubrick takes us on a journey through, I dunno, maybe thirty years, and still, we never really get to know the titular character? I don't get it.

"I don't get it" is not the wrong reaction to immediately have after watching a Kubrick film. Indeed, sometimes, that's the whole point. It doesn't have to "mean" anything if the meaning can be found in the way it looks, the way it feels, the way it all seeps into you. Barry Lyndon wasn't 2001: A Space Odyssey, but afterward, I'm left with the same impression. That doesn't seem right. I am wondering whether that was what Kubrick was hoping to achieve. Why did we spend three hours with this fucker? What did we learn?

And to be clear, by "this fucker," I mean Barry Lyndon, the character (I'm typing all this immediately after the credits roll, and I'll let the rest of Group B tell me whether this was based on a true story or not). Not Kubrick, whose motivations have been made clear over time (to perplex, to engage, to induce wonder) throughout an incredibly diverse filmography. The film itself felt well-done, like there was a guy behind the camera who knew what he was doing. But the character of Barry Lyndon, I mean, why this guy? What did he bring to the table?

It's an interesting phenomenon, to watch a film for three hours and to constantly feel like the supporting characters are more interesting than the main character of focus. One might begin to wish that the camera had followed cousin-fucker Nora Brady into domestic life, or Lord Bullingdon into exile and then the gravy train. It's not that I found Barry Lyndon to be a bad character. He was more like... an empty vessel. Following him throughout his life felt at times like we were just going through the motions. 

Which, okay, fine, is maybe the point. I wouldn't dare claim that the great Stanley Kubrick had a misstep here. Instead, I will bend over backward to justify it. Here's my theory about Barry Lyndon, as I have cooked up in the past fifteen minutes or so. Barry Lyndon is about aimlessness, randomness, and how futile it is to attempt to have agency over your life. This is why all the card games featured throughout—it's all a game of chance. And that's why the life that Barry built from cheating at those card games eventually falls apart. So Barry is less of a character and more of a lesson. A lesson to embrace life's fickleness, or else life is gonna push you back, and hard.

But I think I'd rather watch three hours of a character, as opposed to a three-hour lesson. Let alone a bleak lesson, right? We want to pretend that we have agency in our lives. That gives us comfort. To say that life is all fucking random? That's scary. I've understood that for a long time, and I'm trying to live with it. In the meantime, I think I'd just rather watch a three-hour 18th century epic about someone who I give even a single fuck about.

GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5

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Sunny

I hadn't seen this movie before, but I think I had heard the name of it before. I wrongly assumed was a Coen Brothers movie, because they have work that's just some guy's name. Whoops.

Googling this movie, several potential flags caught my eye: the movie's age, the setting, the length. But what better reason than a group activity to watch a movie I wouldn't nudge myself otherwise to do?

So then my surprise at how engrossed I was! Enjoyable in spite of all the above. I don't know shit about the Seven Years' War; what, we call that the French and Indian war? HS history long failed me.

I don't know enough about the Kubrick body of work or his directorial path to really put this in context with anything else. But it's closer to a "normal" movie à la Paths of Glory rather than an "abnormal" movie à la 2001 or Eyes Wide Shut. I feel as there is more nuance here that I'm blind to, and I'm sure much smarter film buffs on this blog will bring me some symbological light.

That "normalcy" was at first sort of boring, when something just wasn't clicking. But by the cousin/ribbon scene, realizing this movie was having some fun with the characters and setting, it changed the entire lens with which I was viewing, and a certain joy started to emerge.

The understated humor in this movie really hit my resonance. Kubrick recognized the absurdity of these empires, these people, these situations, war in general, to bring humor not through jokes per se, but a soft spotlight on the characters' goings-on. The customs of the time really are ridiculous (not saying our time's great). The robbery scene towards the beginning of the movie. The scene where Barry is punching Lord Barrington in the butt after he disavows him. The restaurant scene that follows that one. The little sheep pulling the chariot. I'm chucklin' here. Even the scene of the son dying (yes, I feel bad saying I laughed, but the heightened treacle of "Papa, Mama, hold my hand" was too much).

The voiceover was an interesting choice. At first I thought a strange crutch? But that voiceover pretty much just did jokes and emotional foreshadowing, rather than action based ("...that he should finish his life poor, lonely and childless"). It added to this feeling that we're all sort of watching Redmond Barry. Yes, we're watching a movie, but we're all watching Barry.

I watched this movie with Kelsey, who pointed out there's a lot shown through subtlety in the facial expressions and the interactions between two characters in many of these long-cut scenes. They get time to breathe and the audience has time to absorb, and through this vehicle the characters show another dimension. I know I shirked at the runtime before, but here's some solid usage; that time is what provided the space to unfold. 

I read somewhere that Kubrick was drawing a line of evil men across three movies, from Alex to Redmond to Jack. Is Redmond Barry evil? Is it fair to compare him and his journey to A Clockwork Orange or The Shining? Something about the characters in those movies felt "more evil" in some way. Malicious? Psychotic? Whereas with Redmond there was an overwhelming sense of entitlement paired with an incredible amount of right-place, right-time. Well, until it was the wrong-place, wrong-time. Something about him sparing Lord Barrington with his duel shot, but then losing his leg/wife/life because of it, drove the hammer home about his general life-path. I'll probably never meet an Alex or Jack type in my real life (probably), but I wouldn't be surprised to know a few Redmonds, even if they're much unluckier with their harebrained endeavors.

Can we bring Duels back? I want to see people demanding satisfaction.

GRADE: 4/5 pukes

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Pat

Part I: "By What Means Pat Recounted the Plot of the Film Barry Lyndon"

The year is Powdered Wig Times. We open on the Irish countryside to the tune of Handel's "Sarabande." Here, Redmond Barry's father dies in a duel, like an asshole. Alone in the world, Barry's mother lives only for her son. This instills a deep love of family in young Redmond Barry, which manifests as him wanting to fuck his cousin. We are in minute eight of 185. 

More accurately, teenage Barry is groomed by his older cousin, Nora Brady, as evidenced by a deeply uncomfortable game of "Find the Ribbon." The main problem with Barry Lyndon's depiction of this abuse—and really, the biggest problem with the first 40 minutes of the movie—is that young Barry is, at all times, played by 32-year-old Ryan O'Neal. And that's 32 in 1975, which borders on Silver Fox status today. 

"He's just a boy!"

This is the same Ryan O'Neal who had already earned an Oscar nom for Love Story and gone full Chippendale in What's Up, Doc?. Asking me to believe that early-'70s Ryan O'Neal doesn't know about sex is like telling me Mozart died without ever seeing a piano. I simply do not believe you.

Whatever you want to call it (a crime), Barry is left obsessed with Nora. Meanwhile, Nora has bagged herself a rich one, in the form of British Army officer Captain John Quin. Enraged, Barry challenges Quin to a duel. 

Barry's father, watching from hell

Barry shoots and kills Captain Quin. Like generations of young Irish men discovered before and after Barry: killing an English officer might feel great, but it gets you in a shitload of trouble. Captain Grogan and Barry's mother talk about how the boy—father of three Ryan O'Neal—will be hunted down if he stays. Barry attempts to flee to Dublin, but the road is rocky (and full of father-son brigand teams).

"This is so much more fun than weekends at Mom's house!"

Robbed and demoralized, Barry trudges to a nearby village and joins the Army. Once in the service, we start to get a clearer picture of who Redmond Barry actually is. Not only does he beat the shit out of a larger soldier named Toole, but he finds out from Captain Grogan that Captain Quin isn't actually dead! It was simply a ruse to get Barry out of the picture. As dumb as this twist is, it highlights an important truth: everyone in Barry's life figured he wouldn't stop until Quin was dead. Barry isn't a sadboi set upon by the cruel whims of fate at all. Barry is a danger to everyone around him.

Once Barry's regiment gets to the Continent, Captain Grogan is shot while walking into a wall of gunfire, like an idiot. Barry gives him a surprisingly long goodbye kiss (on the mouth) and decides that—as much as he likes violence—war just isn't for him. So he steals an officer's coat and papers while the officer is... having a clandestine skinny dip with another soldier?

"Nice."

They're so clearly fucking. It's a wild choice. Not because men didn't have sex with men in 18th century Europe. They totally did. But it feels as though Redmond Barry has accidentally stumbled into an entirely different movie about two gay Army officers in the Seven Years' War. There's a whole alternate universe where these two men fall in love, narrowly survive the Battle of Minden, then return to England to open a bed-and-breakfast. I'd watch that. It sounds like a nice time.

Anyway, Barry assumes the identity of... Lieutenant Fakenham? Are you kidding? That's the name you went with? Was "Lieutenant Colonel Name-Pending" putting on too many airs? Unbelievable. 

Anyway, Lieutenant Fakenham's plan to escape through Belgium is going swimmingly. He even gets his groove back by hooking up with a lonely German housewife. But in an unforeseeable turn of events, Barry is arrested by Prussian Captain Potzdorf on charges of obviously being a deserter. 

"English isn't my first language and even I can tell that's a shit name."

Given the option of the gallows or conscription, Barry joins the Prussian Army. Luckily, everyone else in the Prussian army is also a sociopathic criminal, so Barry learns a lot. He even manages to distinguish himself by saving Captain Potzdorf's life during an enemy bombardment. This earns him a commendation, for which the Colonel of the regiment gives him a medal and also tells Barry he's a giant asshole. Those Germans have always had a way with words.

After the war, Captain Potzdorf gets Barry a job as a cop. First assignment: go undercover to find a spy. Fortunately for Barry, the suspected spy is the Chevalier de Balibari, the most conspicuous man to ever walk the face of the Earth. 

Fuck yeah, Eyepatch Clown! At his first meeting with dandy Snake Plissken, Barry immediately blows his cover. The movie frames this as a moment of human weakness for Barry. He just missed speaking English so much! In my own opinion, I think Barry just recognized a better gig and took it. Either way, Barry gets the warm embrace of drag show Rooster Cogburn and becomes a double agent. While sending back just enough intel to keep Potzdorf happy, Barry helps the Chevalier cheat at cards and scam unthinkable amounts of money from the European gentry.

Using the Chevalier's deportation to escape Prussia, Barry and his new best friend fleece every card table in Europe. When a mark refuses to pay, Barry acts as the loan shark, dueling for money owed. Holy shit, Barry is a terrible person. He's just robbing people at gunpoint, but with extra steps. 

"Workin' 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin'..."

Now firmly living the high life with the Chevalier, Barry sets his sights on a chance for permanent luxury: the Lady Honoria Lyndon. She's young, rich, and—having spent years married to a super old, super sickly guy—down to clown with anyone under 75. Barry and Lady Lyndon eye-smash at the card table and wordlessly begin an affair. 

The aforementioned old guy—Sir Charles Lyndon—accuses Barry of fucking his wife. As Barry brushes him off and leaves the room, Sir Charles maniacally declares that he'll live forever. He then dies immediately. Like, within seconds. Honestly, it's the funniest scene in the movie by a mile.  

After the Intermission, Barry marries Lady Lyndon. The tone of the movie also changes markedly. It's no longer carrying water for "the boy." When Barry smokes in their carriage—even after Lady Lyndon politely asks him to stop—there's no narration to explain his lack of manners or a tearful breakdown. Barry is just an asshole. Barry is unquestionably the villain now.

The only one who says it out loud is Lady Lyndon's son from the first marriage, Little Lord Bullingdon. He has Barry pegged as an opportunist and a shithead. It's natural for children to be a tad resentful when their parents remarry, but no, yeah, you're right on the money, kid.

Despite being a new father, Barry regularly leaves his wife and baby so he can plow randos and play cards. Occasionally he returns to knock the crap out of Little Lord Bullingdon and tell his son Bryan bedtime stories about committing war crimes. On the other hand: fuck yeah, birthday magician! 

Barry's mom is back in the picture and says Barry needs a title. Otherwise, he'll have nothing if Lady Lyndon dies or kicks his ass to the curb. All the wealth and land would go to Little Lord Bullingdon. 

Consequently, Barry spends an obscene amount bribing the English aristocracy to get his claim for a title to the King's ear. He throws parties. He buys land at ten times its value. He imports rare whale oils from the Far East to better lubricate the post-human sacrifice orgies that the British nobility routinely conduct. And after all is said and done, the King barely notices him. Annoyed, Barry beats the shit out of Now-Grown Lord Bullingdon. It's basically how Barry unwinds

Unwilling to put up with this madness any longer,  Bullingdon does a shoe-based power play at a concert Barry is throwing for his high-society friends. Bullingdon calls out Barry, accusing him publicly of being an adulterer, a profligate, and certainly not his real dad.

Barry responds by promptly beating the shit out of Bullingdon in front of English high society. Oof. Probably not going to help the title search. Scandalized, the nobility ostracizes Barry. With no one on his side, all his debts come due. It's looking bleak. The narrator notes that Barry "should finish his life poor, lonely, and childless." Wait, what was that last part?! Oh shit, Bryan! 

As was so common among eight-year-olds in the Georgian Era, little Bryan gets tossed off a horse and dies. Mourning his son, Barry spends his days getting fall-down drunk. In a bid to maintain control of the house, Barry's mom fires Lady Lyndon's favorite reverend, which causes a Lady Lyndon to attempt suicide.

Having had enough of this shit, Lord Bullingdon decides the time has come to murder Barry. He strolls into what's left of the manor and challenges Barry to a duel. Barry—who spent years dueling professionally to collect card debts—accepts. This plan has a 7% chance of working, at best.

The day arrives, and Bullingdon fucks up immediately by misfiring his pistol into the dirt. He's now totally at Barry's mercy, which is not where anyone has ever wanted to be. He runs to the wall, then vomits, then cries a little bit, much to the contempt of the witnesses. It's an extremely MacGruberesque display. 

Barry—out of either mercy or disgust or world-weariness—fires his shot into the ground as well. This allows Bullingdon to reload and finally (after what seems like hours) shoot Barry. But Bullingdon can't even do sanctioned murder correctly and Barry survives. If it's any consolation, Barry's leg gets amputated. 

Down a left foot and a manor house, Barry agrees to leave England in exchange for an annual payment (and to avoid the end of the line for 18th century British criminals). The final shot is of Lady Lyndon signing an alimony payment and staring off into the distance. 

Redmond Barry Lyndon lived his life as a net negative. No one is better off for having met him.

Part II: "Containing an Account of Pat's Criticism of the Film Barry Lyndon"

Imagine if more than half of Good Time was sweeping shots of the New York skyline. Or if Veep was entirely focused on the fashion of the D.C. elite. That's Barry Lyndon. It's a cutting satire about a terrible man in a terrible culture that's been rendered mostly toothless because its director was completely checked out.

This movie is very pretty to look at and a chore to actually watch. And that's shocking to me, because Atlantic Revolution-era criminal capers are totally my jam. I should love this movie, but I don't, because it never accepts what it should be. The first half flat-out refuses to portray Barry as a villain, even though he very clearly is. And even when it comes around in the second half, it's too preoccupied with the production design and art direction to fully focus on the substance. 

The world of Barry Lyndon is brutal. As recounted over the image of a family farm being burned to the ground, the gentleman of the world rule it by sending out "ploughmen, poachers and pickpockets" to kill one another. The "best people" are merely those who know power players like Lord Wendover. And in the end, none of it matters. 

Barry himself is also brutal. He's willing to lie, steal, backstab, even murder to gain and keep what he wants. But he fails to capture permanent success because he's "clever enough at gaining a fortune, but incapable of keeping one." Simply put, he's not brutal in the "proper" ways. The English upper crust is willing to accept Barry—the gambler and shakedown artist who cuckolded a knight and later married his widow—because he spends money on the right people. But they reject him as soon as Barry publicly beats his stepson. Not because the violence was wrong, but because Barry didn't take the "proper" resolution of shooting Bullingdon to death in a duel. It's a deeply sick culture of ritualized carnage, and Barry is just a little too unpolished to fully fit in. 

So if this is supposed to be a character study of a bad man and a takedown of a bad society, why is it shot like an epic? It's not as if Stanley Kubrick was out of his element. He was great at making movies about dangerous psychopaths not just palatable, but iconic.

This is how I picture Gen Z in my head.

No, I think Barry Lyndon is the closest we ever got to Stanley Kubrick quiet-quitting. What Kubrick had really wanted to do was make the craziest biopic about Napoleon Bonaparte to ever smack an audience in the face. But by 1972, the concept of Napoleon was box office poison, due to the utter box office failure of Waterloo. Thanks a lot, guy who produced Maximum Overdrive. So the project was canned, and Kubrick was stuck with hundreds of late-18th century military uniforms and new techniques for filming sex scenes only by candlelight.

After a brief search, Kubrick decided to adapt the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon. But his heart just wasn't in it. All it took was one death threat by the IRA to get Kubrick to leave filming in Ireland. I bet he only made Ryan O'Neal do thirty takes for every shot instead of 100-plus. 

You can tell watching Barry Lyndon that Kubrick had a sprawling epic in his heart while making it. But at the end of the day, that's not what this story is. It's the opposite. It's not a story about a man who changed history, but a man who ultimately changed nothing. Not his own lot in life, and certainly not the kind of society he lived in. As a result, Barry Lyndon the movie is much like Barry Lyndon the man: beautiful to look at, maybe even charming to some, but ultimately hollow at its core. 

Pat's Rating: 🔫🔫

Two out of five flintlock pistols

Epilogue

Though critics were mostly unimpressed by Barry Lyndon during its initial release, the movie has since been re-appraised as a masterpiece, with some even holding it up as Kubrick's best film. Those people are dickriders. Barry Lyndon is Kubrick's answer to an Adam Sandler vacation movie and should be treated as such. 

Epilogue to the Epilogue 

When the credits rolled, Erin exclaimed very loudly "Wait, Stanley Kubrick directed this? What the fuck?"

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GROUP AVERAGE GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

Alright, see everybody in the comments! Thanks!

NEXT TIME: Watching a cartoon with the kids, checking out The Iron Giant.