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topicnews · July 15, 2025

Criterion cult: Barry Lyndon

Criterion cult: Barry Lyndon


In Criterion cultPresent The AV Club Marks a new publication from the criteria collection every month and examines the films that enter an increasingly accessible film canon.

After Stanley Kubrick staged three foggy nominees for the best picture in a row, he made a time that was fulfilled with the emotional tenor of his era Dr. StrangelovePresent 2001: A Space Odysseyor A clockwork orange. Kubricks in 1975 by William Makepeace Thackeray Adaption from 1975 celebrated its 50th anniversary with a new 4K restoration of criterion, which came from criterion in 1975 from 1975 from 1975. Barry Lyndon Was also nominated for the best picture – in one of the strongest harvesting the academy has ever honored – and her Baroque majesty does not differ from her colleagues as it originally seems.

Against Dog day afternoonPresent JawPresent NashvilleAnd One flew over the cuckoo nest-The celebrations that they receive this year and films that are all expressly received to their country-a Picaresques set during the Seven Years' War does not seem to be so relevant for contemporary cultural climate. But in this emotionally oppressed, lavish view of the epic rise and autumn of a cold -blooded strike, Barry Lyndon Finds an eternal putrefaction under the powder wigs and in malt on beauty points. In fact, the incredible attention to detail, something that was emphasized not only by the breathtaking restoration, but also by two brochure interviews contained, which have been printed out American cameramanMakes the film's lipstick all the more obvious.

The focus of this is Redmond Barry (Ryan O'Neal), an Irish softboi, whose opportunism of the 18th century embodies the conflicts of both the “Me” decay in which his film was made in the middle of the film, and the reckless “greed is good” to which America was accessible. And yet the historical elements are never affected, the splendor of Kubrick, which serves to effectively cut up the familiar wishes of his characters, and cruel cold debts under layers made of velvet and shadow.

But this is just a costume, not a cladding. From the opening moments of the film – Barry's father, killed in a duel about something stupid; Barry, faced with the frequent breasts of his cousin, blows his life over her –Barry Lyndon establishes itself as a film, the archaic social codes of which is as transparent as they are realized. There is a reason why the go away Between the film and 21 savages “a lot” works so well: bad decisions that are driven by basic impulses do not disappear. They are baked in the human condition.

While the film continues, Kubrick's script tries the humor of the novel when Barry tries to bend the world to his bally but slow will. Where Thackeray used the first person to tell Barry to tell his own unreliable history and to trust his readers that they put holes in the windbump, Kubrick adds a god -like narrator (Michael Hordern), whose omniscient observations may have Barry's Air and sometimes also the rinsing. It is a choice that could be considered the hand of the audience and accompanies them step by step through the bright affects. But compared to Barry's actions with his perception of his actions (who tries the audience in his self -conforming history of sleep on his war, this narrative is more subtle, grounded, smarter. It is more ironic than matt, more failed than failed. It criticizes mythmak while the aesthetics of the myth is retained.

The atmosphere of the entire film reflects this reluctance. The final camera movement of Barry LyndonA slow backward zoom, which extends a close-up of a character into a tableau that contextualizes its smallness, is reminiscent of both the visual arts of time and in the cutting of our individual place in the great scheme of things. All innovations that in John Alcott's Oscar winner cinematography (which originally developed for NASA that were used during the moon landing influenced the rumor that the event was a Kubrick-Filmed joke) a purpose outside of the pure beauty. It not only reflected the surroundings, but also, like those who live in it, saw in art: worthy, noble, composed. The perfect veneer to create meant that it was all the more powerful than it fell away.

During the conversations between characters, it can look like they are in a battle of wills and wait for the other to burst. And when they finally burst, the recognizable humanity spills in an untidy flood of violence. The oppressed, filled emotion-noise never as opaque as his ladies and gentlemen. These climatic collisions, which almost always lead to death or dismember or social suicide, appear in the 1770s all the things that were much too polite to mention in the 1950s. Barry's rampant fraud, his stupidity with money, his gold diggers, his proud, quick temperament sie are translated by the phrase of this time, but are no less jagged and humanly than the other shaggy dog stories of imperfect men who stumble into cinemas and cinemas at the time.

As a filmmaker who worked in almost every adjustable genre, Kubrick's career always seemed surprising. But Barry LyndonLike so many of his other eyebrow rabin pivots (Kubricks Next film? The crowd that Stephen King adaptation appeals The epidemic), was less blushing away from his interests and its surroundings than in the first time. It was still a somewhat dark view of humanity, which was translated by humans whose deeper feelings in stubborn customs were enclosed with a bitter sense of humor, which was presented by images that served his message and its surroundings. Do not be fooled by the exciting singularity of your Candelabra flames. Barry Lyndon Is in his time because it is timeless.


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