Barry Lyndon
Stanley Kubrick occupies a weird little corner of film culture I tend to tiptoe around—the realm of self-serious film bros, gatekeepers, and guys who treat their Letterboxd like a Rolex. Kubrick is often their god, and Barry Lyndon could be seen as the pinnacle of their gospel—just obscure enough to seem elevated, just gorgeous enough to flaunt.
My not so hot take: Barry Lyndon is stunning. I knew the imagery before I knew the film—those painterly frames, the candlelit shots, the mythic aura that radiates from stills alone. That’s what got me in the seat. There are too many movies to see in this life, but this one had been sitting on my list like a dare.
And I’m glad I took it. Because Barry Lyndon is three hours of visual seduction. Kubrick doesn’t just shoot scenes—he composes them like an 18th-century oil painter with a bone to pick. Kubrick directs like someone possessed by the ghosts of Claude Joseph Vernet and Jean-Baptiste Greuze. There’s Boucher in the indulgence, Watteau in the melancholy, and more than a little Chardin in the stillness. Each frame is a masterclass in composition, lit with maddening precision. You don’t watch this movie—you get ushered into a living gallery of aristocratic rot. The attention to detail is obsessive, borderline unhinged, and it works. You feel swallowed by it. Every frame is a lesson in restraint and decadence at once, and that tension becomes the film’s pulse.
Narratively, it’s a long, cold glass of betrayal, ego, violence, and bitter class satire. The kind of story where you’re not exactly rooting for anyone, but you’re glued to every damn turn of their downfall. It’s overlong, sure. It meanders. But it also hypnotizes. It invites you to settle into its luxury, then kicks you in the teeth with what all that luxury cost.
It may not have the pop culture shine of The Shining or the academic fanfare of Dr. Strangelove, but to me, this is one of Kubrick’s boldest swings—and he hits. I’m glad it’s found a second life through Criterion and the slow burn of time. It deserves to be seen, not just admired academically.