Barry Lyndon
The title of this blog post is a failed reference to „Fanny and Alexander“. For some reason, I feel like there are lots of between them: Both are epic stories centered about the life of a man (or a boy), both movies are somewhat episodic, and finally Lady Lyndon barely appears in the movie just like Fanny does. XD Ultimately, both movies gave me a similar vibe, I don’t know why.
„Barry Lyndon“ is another one of those movies that took a little time for me to like. I barely knew anything about the story except that it’s about a guy who wants to enter the ‚noblesse‘ but fails, and that it is based on a book by Thackeray. That was everything I needed to know that the movie would be very, very boring. I could only hope that Kubrick’s gorgeous directing would make up for that, and luckily it did: „Barry Lyndon“ was rather suspenseful especially towards the end, it brought Victorian England to life in a very believable way and finally, I think that it did a good job at characterizing Barry Lyndon himself as an ambiguous, very human type of person. He is brave, yet cowardish, full of life, yet obsessed about getting a title. Most of all though, I felt sorry for Lady Lyndon: She really had a very small but sympathetic role in Barry’s life and her appearance made the film so much nicer too, heh. She was the only naive, pure-hearted character in the whole story.
All in all, I can easily see why „Barry Lyndon“ ended up becoming Kubrick’s least popular movie: It really is not suited for everybody’s palate. However, I enjoyed it and I think it was an outstanding movie. It just happens to be one of my least favorite Kubrick’s behind masterpieces like „A Clockwork Orange“, „2001“ and „Full Metal Jacket“.