Revisit Kubrick’s ‘Barry Lyndon’
By the mid-1970s, the arrival of a Stanley Kubrick film in theaters was a cultural event.
The American director who had shunned Hollywood for England had basically created his own Kubrickian genre with a series of audacious films — “Dr. Strangelove,” “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “A Clockwork Orange” — which were groundbreaking both technically and narratively, and which touched a collective nerve.
And so “Barry Lyndon” arrived in 1975 and landed with a thud, at least in the United States. After years of glimpsing into the dystopian future, Kubrick reached back to Europe’s aristocratic past, adapting William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel about the rise, colorful adventures and fall of an Irish rogue.
Critics were lukewarm, at best, calling it chilly and unemotional. However, Martin Scorsese commented, “I found it to be one of the most profoundly emotional films I will ever see.”
Despite negative critical reaction and a lackluster domestic box office, the film was nominated for best picture, director and screenplay (both Kubrick), and won Oscars for the costumes (UllaBritt Soderlund and Milena Canonero), cinematography ( John Alcott), production design (Ken Adam, with Roy Walker and Vernon Dixon) and music score (Leonard Rosenman).
History has sided with Scorsese. In an art house era of often inscrutable films (not a dig, but a compliment), it is now rightly regarded as a masterpiece, and 42 years later its technical innovations are still eye-popping.
“Barry Lyndon” is a film that demands to be seen in a theater, and the Castro Theatre provides the latest opportunity at 8 p.m. Sunday, March 25.
Much has been made of its technical innovations, chiefly the creation of specially made lenses to capture the glow of indoor candlelight — the whole film is shot in natural light. The lenses were based on those created by NASA to better illuminate the darkness of outer space.
Perhaps Kubrick’s greatest achievement, though, is the authenticity of “Barry Lyndon.” Every shot in the film could be a painting because Kubrick was determined to use inspiration from artists of the time. He got compositions and framing from such English artists as William Hogarth, Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds; and lighting ideas from Dutch masters such as Johannes Vermeer and Rembrandt.
Many of the costume designs and props in the film came directly from these paintings. Soderlund aged the costumes through a technique of boiling and dying (Kubrick thought costumes in period pieces looked too spiffy and new). Some costumes really were authentic: They were borrowed from museums and even bought through auction at Sotheby’s.
All this authenticity — not to mention the melodic intonation of narrator Michael Hordern — and yet, there is one bit of phoniness that has provoked debate to this day: The casting of American pretty-boy actor Ryan O’Neal as Barry.
The miscast O’Neal barely tries for an Irish brogue; he sounds much like he did in his popular hits like “Paper Moon” (which plays before “Barry Lyndon,” at 6 p.m Sunday) and “Love Story.” Hard to believe, but O’Neal actually was Kubrick’s first choice, hoping a bankable star would put a difficult, 3-hour, 5-minute film over the top at the box office (it did do well in Europe).
Admittedly, though there are many British actors from that time who would have been great in the role, I have warmed to O’Neal’s performance over the years. Barry is an impostor, whether he is masquerading as a British officer or a Prussian spy during the Seven Years War, or an English lord managing an estate. Barry is perpetually out of place, and O’Neal works well in that sense.
The big joke of the film, though, is that while Barry might be an unprincipled rogue, the aristocratic society he attempts to infiltrate — the 18th century’s 1 percent — is just as unscrupulous.
As Kubrick reminds us: “the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor — they are all equal now.”