Barry Lyndon

Barry Lyndon is a 1975 period drama film written, directed, and produced by Stanley Kubrick, based on the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray. Starring Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Leonard Rossiter, and Hardy Krüger, the film recounts the early exploits and later unravelling of a fictional 18th-century Irish rogue and opportunist who marries a rich widow to climb the social ladder and assume her late husband's aristocratic position.

Kubrick began production on Barry Lyndon after his 1971 film A Clockwork Orange. He had originally intended to direct a biopic on Napoleon, but lost his financing because of the commercial failure of the similar 1970 film Waterloo. Kubrick eventually directed Barry Lyndon, set partially during the Seven Years' War, utilising his research from the Napoleon project. Filming began in December 1973 and lasted roughly eight months, taking place in England, Ireland, East Germany and West Germany.

The film's cinematography has been described as ground-breaking. Especially notable are the long double shots, usually ended with a slow backwards zoom, the scenes shot entirely in candlelight, and the settings based on William Hogarth paintings. The exteriors were filmed on location in Ireland, England and West Germany, with the interiors shot mainly in London. The production was troubled; there were problems related to logistics, weather, and even politics (Kubrick feared that he might be an IRA hostage target).

Barry Lyndon won four Oscars at the 48th Academy Awards: Best Scoring: Original Song Score and Adaptation or Scoring: Adaptation; Best Costume Design; Best Art Direction; and Best Cinematography. Although some critics took issue with the film's slow pace and restrained emotion, its reputation, like that of many of Kubrick's works, has grown over time. It is now considered to be one of the best and most influential films ever made.

Plot
Redmond Barry (Ryan O'Neal) is a young, roguish Irishman who's determined, in any way, to make a life for himself as a wealthy nobleman. Enlisting in the British Army, fighting in the Seven Years War in Europe, Barry deserts from the British Army, joins the Prussian Army, gets promoted to the rank of a spy, then becomes pupil to con artist and gambler Chevalier de Balibari (Patrick Magee). Barry then lies, dupes, duels, and seduces his way up the social ladder and enters into a lustful but loveless marriage to a wealthy countess named Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson), takes the name of "Barry Lyndon", settles in England with wealth and power beyond his wildest dreams, then slowly falls dramatically into ruin.

Why It rocks

 * 1) Gorgeous cinematography.
 * 2) The score is great.
 * 3) Amazing acting from the whole cast. Especially Ryan O'Neal.
 * 4) Barry Lyndon himself is a very flawed character who starts from the bottom and works his way to the top.
 * 5) The sets and locations look beautiful.
 * 6) The ending for Barry Lyndon is very tragic as he loses his legs and all his fortunes.
 * 7) For a period drama, it's one of the best.
 * 8) The costumes are some of the best you will ever see in a film.
 * 9) The film really makes you engage with Mr. Lyndon.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) At 187 minutes, it's Kubrick's longest film which might be a bit much for some.
 * 2) Of his 8 most famous films, it is the most unfairly overlooked.

Critical Reception
Barry Lyndon over time, has gained a more positive reaction. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 89% based on 75 reviews, with an average rating of 8.30/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Cynical, ironic, and suffused with seductive natural lighting, Barry Lyndon is a complex character piece of a hapless man doomed by Georgian society." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 89 out of 100 based on reviews from 21 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Roger Ebert added the film to his 'Great Movies' list on 9 September 2009 and increased his original rating from three and a half stars to four, writing, "Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, received indifferently in 1975, has grown in stature in the years since and is now widely regarded as one of the master's best. It is certainly in every frame a Kubrick film: technically awesome, emotionally distant, remorseless in its doubt of human goodness."

The Village Voice ranked the film at number 46 in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics. Director Martin Scorsese has named Barry Lyndon as his favourite Kubrick film, and it is also one of Lars von Trier's favourite films. Barry Lyndon was included on Time's All-Time 100 best movies list. Quotations from its script have also appeared in such disparate works as Ridley Scott's The Duellists, Scorsese's The Age of Innocence, and Wes Anderson's Rushmore. In the 2012 Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll, Barry Lyndon placed 19th in the directors' poll and 59th in the critics' poll. The film ranked 27th in BBC's 2015 list of the 100 greatest American films.

In a list compiled by The Irish Times critics Tara Brady and Donald Clarke in 2020, Barry Lyndon was named the greatest Irish film of all time.

Box Office
The film made $20.2 million against it's $12 million budget.

Trailers
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Reviews & Analysis
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Trivia

 * Many of the shots were composed and filmed in order to evoke certain eighteenth-century paintings, especially those by Thomas Gainsborough.
 * Production was moved from Ireland to England after writer, producer, and director Stanley Kubrick received word that his name was on an I.R.A. hit list for directing a movie featuring English soldiers in Ireland. Consequently, several scenes were dropped.
 * Contrary to legend, this movie did use artificial lighting in some scenes (for example, when Bryan (David Morley) learns he's getting a horse). However, it is true that no electronic lighting was used for the candle-lit scenes. A lens built by the Carl Zeiss Company for N.A.S.A., a 50mm Zeiss lens modified with the Kollmorgen adaptor used in still cameras, was used to shoot scenes lit only by candle. This lens had the largest aperture of any ever built for movie use (f/0.7).
 * Stanley Kubrick used to play the soundtrack's classical music during takes to get the actors and actresses in a better mood. He was reportedly influenced by Sergio Leone's method in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).
 * Filming took 300 days over a two-year span, beginning around May or June of 1973. The production suffered two major shutdowns, resulting in what was then considered a bloated $11 million budget. It was finally released in December of 1975.